Returning Races
by WillProbablyWork
Summary: Thought long gone for millennia, the missing races that have shaped multiple Galaxies are returning, can the newly raised Fifth Race survive it? SG-1, Atlantis, and Universe under one roof as well as some OC's. Starting off about mid season 1 SGU, Won't be changing anything about SGU.
1. Chapter 1

**CFB Base Borden, Canada**

 **February, 2010**

William was unsure as to why he was to report at noon on a tuesday, usually he would be in class as this time but because of family day the day earlier he was off for the week from classes. He is still a bit peeved at that, south of the border their spring break was actually in spring and not the middle of February, yet still he wouldn't trade his home country of Canada for anything, especially since he lived the first ten years of his life in Britain he knew it was less compared to Canada, he really can't say in what aspects but he just knew.

Yet he still had no clue as to why he is in the waiting room, he had clues. His two friends sitting to his left and right, both air force cadets like him, both in the same program as him, and across the rather large room is his commanding officer. Which scared him, and he could tell his friends as well, _Why is the Major waiting with us_ he kept asking himself yet the only answer that came to him is that all four of them are waiting for people far far above the Major, and they are in the next room.

"Sir" said Mark to his left, this first one to hazard the Major's wrath "May we know why we were called in?" the Major looked up with a thinking look, he looked at all three of the cadets each before answering.

"No clue cadet, they took me from my family as well, only know General Maston called us up" replied the Major, causing confused looks from all three cadets then a slightly smug look from Jordan.

"Shouldn't he be in…"  
"Washington" finished the Major. They all knew General Maston was the head of all research projects, including classified ones, a few years ago until he was transferred to the pentagon of all places. Rumor going around the air force is that he along with the Americans were working on the next generation of fighters. Jordan, the top marks on in simulators and a good pilot outside smugly thought they must be here to get new blood into the new fighters.

Then to the three cadets' right a Lieutenant-Colonel opened the door, whom was from the US air force of all places, William and the Major noticed. The three cadets stood and saluted the officer, because he wasn't a Canadian officer they didn't have to but William figured it was best to cover all bases as for Mark and Jordan they only figured anyone in uniform already outranked them. As for the Major he walked toward the Lt-Col and shook his hand.

"What we doing here... Davis?" asked the Major noticing the Lt-Col's name on his uniform.

"We're here for these three cadets mostly and you as their commanding officer is needed for any questions" Stated Lt-Col Paul Davis "Cadets. Major. Please follow me" as he turned around and entered the room followed by the Major, William, Mark, and Jordan.

What they found there threw all four of them for a loop. Starting from left to right was a man in a suit that no one knew, General Maston, General Michaels the Commander of the Royal Canadian Air Force, the man in charge of the entire Air force, a blonde woman, who from what William recalls from the bird on her uniform is a colonel in the US air force, and then Lt-Col Davis who sat to the right of the full bird Col. All four walked forwards and offered a crisp salute mainly to the man who outrank nearly every person in the entire Country.

"Stand to gentlemen" Said General Michaels. The four relaxed, well the Major did, the cadets were still on edge.

"Now we are here due to a couple of papers that you three boys... let's call published, a few months ago" said General Michaels.

The three cadets were wide eyed they tried to suppress their surprise, but failed. The paper the the General was talking about was a fun side project the three had done. It started after a rather long night of drinking and a Star Wars marathon. It began as usual watching young Anakin and then by the time the Death Star blew up they were just drunk enough for Mark to say aloud "What idiots did they put in charge of defending it" in which William replied "I could defend that station better than they did!" and responding Mark said "And I could design something better than a god damn globe!" "Well why don't you?" asked Jordan, who was on the verge of passing out. And so they did.

By the end of the last movie Jordan was passed out, yet Mark and William were going over the basics of what they thought space combat in the sci-fi setting of Star Wars should really look like. By the time the two fell asleep it was five in the morning and they had a paper a little over a hundred pages long. When they woke up and realized what they did, they all read it and had a laugh. Then Jordan posted it on the internet for laughs, and it blew up. Over the next couple months whenever the three got together they usually had conversations about how a much better the paper could be and eventually they did another more refined, un alcohol influenced, paper. Then later just William and Mark wrote one up on space battles using technology either available or what they figured would be available in the next ten years, unlike Jordan, William and Mark were in line to get aerospace engineering degrees so they knew one or two things about orbital vehicles and bleeding edge technology. So they wrote how space battles and ships would be designed using the rather advanced technology they figured would be available in a few years. That one wasn't as well received as the previous two so they figured their five minutes of fame had run its course. Now they were here facing the highest ranking person in Canada and for a joke. They had no words.

"What paper?" asked the Major looking at the boys with the confused look.

"Care to explain?" asked the US Colonel

Hesitating at first, and looking to his friends William was the one to respond first, and the two others were relieved. "Three papers we wrote... six months ago and posted to the internet for fun"

"Go on son, what was in the papers?" said General Matson

"Sir they were a detailed list on what space battles should look like and how spaceships should be designed… in Star Wars" replied William

"We're here for Star Wars?" asked Major even more flabbergasted

"Sort of, Major we were hoping for you to answer a couple of questions about your cadets here before we get started with them" said the US Colonel again

So they did. A couple questions about how they were in training, and how they are as soldiers. What messed with the people from the US a bit was how both William and Mark were in a program that got them a fast track for aerospace engineering from the University of Toronto and not a military college. But after it was all done the Major was thanked and dismissed, then the three cadets answered questions for half and hour about themselves and their life.

"Well now we were wondering who wrote what in the paper exactly" said General Matson coming back to the paper.

This time is was Jordan who ventured out first "Well I helped out in the second papers for the suggested designs for fighters and pointed out any problems when these two had questions of what a pilot might need"

Next was William "I wrote mostly about how battles should be carried out, the use of fighters and different classes of vessels, I also helped in vessel designs" Said William trying to make it seem more professional by excluding it was about space combat and even more so it was fiction.

"And I mostly split the designing of vessels and fighters with Wil… Cadet Cole. And also wrote it up" said Mark slipping with saying William instead of using his last name. mainly to the fact that they are talking about a fictional designs for a fictional universe.

"Alright Cadets can you give us a minute to discuss this?" asked the suited man. So with a crisp salute the three left the room and collapsed into the waiting room chairs.

* * *

"What the hell are they talking about the papers for?" asked Jordan, William and Mark only looked at each other, each knew what the other was thinking.

"You think?" asked Mark

"There's no other explanation…" replied William

"You gonna tell me or keep it to yourself?" asked Jordan

"They is a small chance that we may have stumbled on something classified when writing our paper…" said Mark

"Star Wars?" said Jordan dumbfounded

"No the one without you"

"What you actually think you used classified tech when you were designing your space ships?" said Jordan

"Overlord…" mumbled William

"What?"

"Operation Overlord was the name of D-Day in WW2 a few years before actual D-Day a teacher who wrote crosswords used words like Overlord, Utah, and Omaha all names for beaches on D-Day and the name of the operation itself. Leadership thought espionage but it was just a coincidence…" explained William

"Some bloody coincidence. How exact were you with your future technologies?" said Jordan

"Nowhere near close actually" came the voice of the US Colonel who they found out was named Carter, the three rose quickly and saluted her.

"Now I want to thank you Cadets for being quite forward. However after deliberation all we were looking for was Cadet Cole, and Cadet Campbell, Thank you Cadet Fergeson you may go home to your family" said Colonel Carter looking to Jordan who peaked at his friends before walking away.

"Can you two come back in" said Carter when they both entered General Michaels was gone and Davis was also missing.

"I need you two to sign these non-disclosure agreements and we can get started" said the suited man, who they found out was a representative of Canada working at the Pentagon, a Mr. Jack Harp. William and Mark looked at the hundred page non-disclosure agreement and signed it where ever Mr. Harp said to. They figured why not, they were going to be lifelong air force so they knew if they ever said no they wouldn't get another chance for a long while.

After it was all signed and done Colonel Carter smiled and took out a radio and said a few words. A beam of white engulfed the two Cadets and they were in a different room with only Carter in front of them. Surprised they looked around and when they turned around they saw the planet Earth below them. They were in space.

"Cadets welcome aboard the USS General George Hammond and it is time for you to learn about the Stargate"

* * *

 **USS General George Hammond, Geostationary Earth Orbit**

 **A few days later...**

William and Mark were in a conference room aboard a spaceship. That fact didn't go unnoticed by them but it was but a single microcosm of a massive division they they had learned about across their spring break, it was friday now and they only had two days before returning to class.

"Look at this, the Asgard are still alive" said William turning an issued laptop for Mark to see

"They are Vanir, I read it, they are abducting humans in Pegasus they're the bad Asgard. Have you seen what kind of power these plasma beams put out?" said Mark

Since they came aboard and they realized the massive undertaking that it would take to read through everything they decided to split it up, William would look over all the races, planets, and factions that the SGC had come across and Mark would look into the technology available and known to humanity or rather Tau'ri.

"Yah... these Asgard really gave us amazing things, I hope we don't screw ourselves with the tech we got" said William

"I say the same thing to myself nearly everyday" came the voice of the commander of this vessel, Colonel Carter. The two Cadets rose and saluted her it had been the first time since coming aboard that they were in the same room as the legendary Carter now that the two of them realized how many times she along with General Jack O'Neill, an archaeologist of all things Dr. Daniel Jackson, and an alien Jaffa Teal'c have saved Earth and the Galaxy at large, the two Cadets knew they were in the presence of a legend.

"Please sit" said Carter sitting at the head of the table

The two Cadets sat down and attempted to clean their admittedly messy clothes, they were very much focused solely on reading reports the past few days.

"Now any questions?" asked Carter

"Ma'am I was wondering why we are here. I am aware we had done a good job at thinking things out in terms of space battles and spaceship design but I'm sure you have tonnes of people a lot smarter than us" said Mark with William nodding his head

"Well you give yourselves to little credit, while we are aware in how our ships can be upgraded, quite a bit of your suggestions in design for fighters and ships have made us reconsider how we build our ships, an example is right behind you" said Carter pointing to William who was at the other end of the table, turning around they saw the window and looking down, the Earth

"Windows" said William remembering how he wrote extensively in the papers how actual windows on military spaceships was an idiotic move and if they wanted to see anything outside they can use a monitor instead of having a weak point in the armour.

"Exactly while our shields are of the second most powerful known we have had multiple times when they were either close to collapsing or have gone completely, we are looking into adding battle mode shutters on all our current windows and replacing the tactically important ones with holograms which will give us the same thing. Also given that our fleet will be expanding greatly soon due to the Beta site coming online with its seven Daedalus sized ship construction bays we will need people who can use large ships in a three dimensional battlefield instead of the usual two we have had on Earth" Said Carter looking to William with a smile.

"forty-five , seventy-three long" said Mark referring to the possible coordinate system that William suggested in all three papers in how to determine where in space an enemy ship is compared to your own. The basics of this is based on straightforward being 0 degrees and straight aft being 180 degrees on the level the ship is built in, then finding where the ship is in the up or down directions is determined the same way, then a third word is called, incoming for a ship being in optimal weapons range, short for being close to entering optimal weapons range, and long for being really far our and the chance of a weapon hitting before they could take any action being basically zero.

"Exactly currently we only say a ship is entering weapons range when it is at optimal range and not when we could really fire and possibly get a hit. Said range really only is determined by the sensors officer, Marks the sensor operator on the Hammond currently has it at around three hundred kilometers, yet the one on board the Daedalus who usually battles Hive ships has hers at over five hundred. While its a mixed bag depending on the enemy and I am sure after you are acquainted with the possible enemies we will be fighting we can come up with an even better designation system than Cole here has come up with" said Carter

"So what will happen to us? We got class starting up in two days" said William looking to Mark then Carter

"Well really designing aircraft to work in atmosphere is all well and good but when a ship two miles long can easily enter an atmosphere and just float there it kinda doesn't matter unless we're building actual fighters" said Carter

Doing a quick conversion to kilometers, like a civilized person, Mark said the first thing coming to mind "An Aurora Class Battleship" he said. Turning to William who had a confusing look on his face "An Ancient Warship" Mark clarified "if I remember correctly you've only come across a couple of them intact" said Mark looking the Carter

"Yup the Aurora was beat up however we had the Orion, we know the Travelers have one, and the Tria, who we are currently in the middle of salvaging" said Carter

"Wait you actually have one of these ships?" said William

"Well the Hammond is currently taking on supplies for the long haul to the void, we will be taking a piggy back with Atlantis when it returns to Pegasus, We will be fixing her up and hopefully bring it back to the Alpha Site for a full study" said Carter

"Your gonna tear it apart?" said Mark with an accusatory tone until he quickly got ahold of himself and added a "Ma'am"

"It's alright our best experts in Ancient technology will be taking it apart so hopefully we can put it back together and use it after we learned everything we can from it" said Carter

"So if our aerospace engineering degrees don't mean much unless we're working on fightercraft we have no reason to go back" said William looking at Mark

"Yes while you have done all of the theory work behind airplanes, dynamics, fluid mechanics, Thermodynamics, Aerodynamics your pretty much got what is really needed when designing fighter craft now that we have all new engines and technology which makes things like inertia irrelevant. Which is why we're giving you the chance to either continue your education or come work for Homeworld Command we really have no actual qualifications as long as you can deliver we are happy to have you, as well as since your officer training only has flight coordination left and I'm sure none of you were ever in it for actually flying airplanes we can quickly graduate you and give you the ranks of Second Lieutenant in the Royal Canadian Air Force as well as a commission" said Carter

Giving a quick look to each other they both said "we're in" to a smiling Carter

* * *

 **The Tria, Galactic Void**

 **March**

After a quick trip of ten days Atlantis arrived at where the Tria was cataloged to have been set adrift after the Ancients aboard left for Atlantis and subsequently died. With Carter, Zelenka, and Mckay the Tria was going to be strapped with an Asgard hyperdrive built solely for this use, the design of the hyperdrive was meant for the O'Neill class battleship and as such it was designed for a ship half the size of the Tria and a quarter of the mass. So through rough estimations it would take a month for the intergalactic hyperdrive to bring the goliath that is the Aurora class battleship to orbit over the Beta site where a specialized dock was being prepped, and by specialized dock it means a flat landing pad with equipment on all sized to take the Tria apart and study the most advanced warship in millions of years of known history.

"Im telling you we need to remove sections 15 and 16 to get the drive to fit" said McKay to the gathered people on the bridge of the Tria

"And what? remove hundreds of tonnes of a perfectly working warship, what if we lose something valuable" said Shepherd

"We're not gonna just toss it we're gonna load it up on the Hammond to bring it back with the ship" replied McKay

"And why don't I just toss you" said Ronon walking in front of McKay with his imposing figure

"Why do you care if I remove some of the ship?" said McKay

"This is an Ancient Warship if your people can understand everything that makes it tick we can really whip the Wraith around" said Ronon

"Which is why we are not gonna remove anything from the ship we just need to work around systems and sections we know nothing about like sections 15 and 16, and we either remove sections with technology we know about or have back ups" said Carter bringing up an internal view of the Tria and highlighted an area at the back of the ship but opposite to 15 and 16

"The stasis pods" said Zelenka seeing the writing in Ancient, they had yet to setup the program that turned all the Ancient into English onboard the Tria

"What that's only half a section we need at least one and a half sections to get the thing to fit" said McKay

"Why can't you just let some of it stick out?" ask Teyla

"And what remove dozens of square meters of hull?" replied McKay

"Look here right at the back" said Carter manipulating the console to show the back of the vessel "We can scrap out this drone bay and expose it to space, they were empty to begin with and it won't matter in the long run we got twenty more such drone bays across the ship"

"That may work…" said McKay going back to his tablet manipulating the simulations on it and ignoring the rolling eyes of everyone else in the bridge.

* * *

 **Elsewhere on the Tria**

"This is amazing" said Mark looking around him

"It's another corridor we've seen plenty aboard the Hammond, then Atlantis, now here" replied William walking next to him looking down at his tablet. The two have been thick as thieves since they came aboard the Hammond, they were the youngest people on the Hammond crew and because of that only a few onboard really decided to hang out with them, then when they got to Atlantis they were the youngest there as well, asides from Teyla's son.

"You have become so jaded to this it is still amazing" said Mark

"Yes the largest and most powerful warship in unknown millenia and yet it didn't stop the loss of the war for its builders and plunging an entire galaxy into a ten thousand year dark age"

"What has gotten you all sad?" asked Mark

"This ship I've been going through its capabilities since we've come aboard, it should be able to take on dozens of Wraith Hive ships and their Cruisers alone, yet the ship in its forty year history only managed to nab a little over a hundred ships" said William

"A hundred ships?"

"In forty years Campbell it's ridiculously sad" said William, now that they were commissioned officers and on an actual assignment they gotten use to using their last names to address each other, especially because Marks is the name of a senior officer on the Hammond and William was to tired of being directed to the bridge whenever he asked where Mark was.

"So what? This ship is a battleship, battleships are meant to be escorted by dozens of other ships" said Mark

"Actually it's official class is a Command ship" said William turning to his tablet which was connected to the Tria showing the Ancient writing to Mark

"I can't read that!?" said Mark "You can read Ancient?"

"Spent the days on Atlantis figuring it out, they have got quite the teaching program in there, meant for kids but still. The problem is conversions of units and different names for different technologies" replied William

"Ya well whatever" said Mark as the came to the makeshift cafeteria onboard the Tria. Getting their lunches the two sat at an empty table.

"What differentiates a Command ship from a Battleship?" asked Mark digging into his blue jello

"No clue, all ship captains are Commanders even if they are responsible for only their ship or an entire fleet which is weird" said William still going through the database on the Tria, specifically the warship sections

"Well what else other than this hulk do they got as ships?" asked Mark

"They got the Battleships, Cruisers which from what I've read we actually seen one of em built by the replicators" said William "A destroyer, a science ship, an exploration ship…"

"Really? Only three different classes for war?"

"Well they didn't have the population to waste for fighter pilots after the plague nearly wiped them out and I can see how they wouldn't want to use automated fighters due to the Wraith getting one" said William. "On Earth, if we exclude carrier ships we really only have cruisers and destroyers, battleships were a long ago decommissioned classification"

"Hu… any other ships?"

"Well they got city ships and… Jesus"

"What?"

"I need a better translation this transport ship is apparently an average of 6 kilometers long" said William

"Jesus why would they need a ship that big?"

"No clue, they probably use it to store stuff they don't want stored on a planet"

"Like?"

"I don't know man your trying to make me try to think like a race millions of years old, could be just extra resources, could be tonnes of antimatter, no clue"

"6 kilometers full of antimatter?" asked Mark wide eyed

"Now that would be an interesting explosion" replied William with a smile

"Howdy Cole, Cambell" said a man as he walked up to the two friends with his own tray of food

"Crater, how's it going?" said the William calling the 302 pilot by his callsign. Something to do with a missile not being attached right during one of his training flights, it had nothing to do with him but the crater in the runway still got him in the end.

"Goin good nothing really to do but workout" replied Crater

"And you will be working out for the next week as you head back to Earth on the Hammond" said Mark

"Ya really hoped we gonna be heading to Pegasus, always good dog fighting against Wraith so I'm told"

"Always with the hot shots these pilots, hopefully Jordan can get in" said William referring to their friend who had not been privy to the truth about the Stargate.

"Ah yes this Jordan, I'ma hope so too, so I can shoot his ass down in simulators and show him hes got nothin on us" said Crater pointing to his pin showing the words F-302 with the fightercraft above its name.

"Well let's hope so, someone eventually needs to shoot him down, his ego just keeps getting bigger" said Mark

"Well getting our commission before him sure knocked him a few notches down" said William smiling still looking at his tablet

"What you looking at there Cole?" asked Crater

"Going over the Ancients idea of a battleship" said William with distaste in his voice

"What it's not a powerful ship?" asked Crater

"No it is, can take anything we probably could throw at it head on, but when Daedalus and Apollo were fighting the Asurans getting one of these things caught with its pants down was a death sentence" replied William

"Well they still got the drones so that's a plus" said Mark

"Ya well I'm still not sure where they get the drones it's like the ZedPM's we have no clue how they built them and sadly they are the most advanced tech the Ancients had" replied William

"Well eventually we will figure it out, we always do…" said Crater who had been with the SGC before it was Homeworld Command

"Hopefully soon these things are amazingly useful, with enough ZedPM's we can get a supply chain to the Dest…" trailed William

"What you find something?" asked Mark

"I need a better translator for this" replied William getting up and heading out the cafeteria in a run/walk.

* * *

 **Well that was the first chapter of hopefully a good story. Really I'm picking somewhere in the middle of the 1st season of SGU I won't be changing anything about SGU and focusing mostly on what else is happening with the SGC. My OC will be having an equal amount of writing with everyone else after this chapter, I'm just setting him up here. So let me Know what yall think.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Pentagon, USA**

 **March**

Jack was slightly bored in the meeting it was the usual beginning of the month meeting funding distributions, personnel integrations, and now the IOA representatives were causing a scene again.

"I say again it is imperative that we reverse this decision, Earth has lost a significant asset as long as Atlantis is in another Galaxy" Said the Chinese representative Mrs. Xiaoyi

"The control chair brought back by the Apollo from the Tria a year ago is now installed and we can control the drone weapons at the base in Antarctica. We already have gone over this, Atlantis is needed in Pegasus for our fight against the Wraith" said Jack, he hated having to play politics especially with the IOA but that was the result of being behind a desk. Some days he wished he was still going through the gate with SG-1 but whenever he runs around the Washington Mall and feels his knees he knows that part of his life is over.

"The Wraith are fighter each other, we can easily let them kill each other in their Civil War" replied Xiaoyi

"Civil wars end as I'm sure our American friends know, and besides having an Ancient City back in a galaxy filled with Ancient technologies will allow a more efficient collection of said technologies" said the Canadian representative, Mr. Harp, who was being more cooperative recently. Jack wasn't sure why but he had his ideas, maybe having some of their more promising leader candidates working under Carter herself, maybe it was them getting their first battlecruiser, as the keel for it was just laid down last week at the Beta site shipyards, who knows. As long as another Country is happy to work with Homeworld Command Jack was happy to have them

"Which can be easily acquired with the experienced personnel that the Atlantis expedition has cultivated over the last six years" countered the Russian representative, even now after working with the Americans for the better part of a decade the Russian civilians still sided with China nine times out of ten.

"Gentlemen I know you're concerned for the safety of Earth, but I also know that you're bringing this up so the Woolsey couldn't argue the counter, we have already decided Atlantis goes to Pegasus and stays there for the foreseeable future, this conversation is over" finished Jack to the unhappy expressions of some of the IOA "What's next?"

"Well we have the crew of the HMS Victory to confirm as well as the RFS Kursk, then we got updates on our current situation with our enemies and allies" Said Lt-Col Davis the man in charge of steering these meetings. The HMS Victory will be Britain's first ship coming out of the Siberian shipyards, along with the RFS Kursk will be Russia's newest and only ship after the loss of the Korolev. After a half hour going over the command staffs, some of who were new to the knowledge of the Stargate there were no turn-downs and they moved on.

"Alright let's move onto the state of the galaxies" said the US representative, Mr. Strom "Mr Davis an update please"

"The Lucian Alliance is still doing their drug trades and pirating some of the more independent human worlds as well as those in the Free Jaffa Nation"

"Independent worlds?" asked the new representative from Japan. Since Homeworld Command has become a more stable command system more countries that could help defend Earth were brought into the fold, another prerequisite was being a stable country. The new additions are Germany, Japan, South Korea, India, Switzerland, and Israel.

"Yes a few former slave human worlds have been able to stabilized after the fall of the Goa'uld Empire, their heads of state are usually a King or similar person with all encompassing power. As well as other planets that have been made aware of the state of Galaxy due to our exploration of the Stargate network. Based on the current state of the galaxy our people believe it is best to let them keep the dictatorships and attempt to grow friendly relations to stabilize them and slowly move over into a democracy" said Davis

"A few?"

"There are some Human worlds that trade with the greater galaxy through the gate but none are more advanced than 1960s technology"

"Like Langara" said Mr. LaPierre the French representative "We are trying to stabilize them after the religious war with the Ori. But after the loss of nearly a fifth of their population since the arrival of Anubis and the Ori some people are blaming us as well as demanding we take their gate away so they can live in peace"

"Is Jonas doing anything to help that?" asked Jack, he had only a few conversations with Jonas Quinn since contact with Langara has been re-established after the Ori incursion

"Indeed the three powers on Langara have decided to form a Federation to protect themselves from outside threats and Jonas is inline to be the head of it, again it is a small minority, with increased humanities work as well as building up their planet we are sure this minority will lose its support"

"Alright back to the Lucian Alliance" said Jack turning to Davis

"Well we are currently aware of the alliance trying to get their hands on the knowledge of where we are building more of our Daedalus battlecruisers but so far we are able to keep the Beta site location secret"

"Not like they can get there" smiled Jack

"Why not?" asked the British representative a Mr. Chapman

"The Beta site is situated on an unknown planet to the Goa'uld Empire and is on the opposite side of the Galaxy from the Empires previous holdings. The only planets with stargates nearby are either empty or were part of the Protected Planets Treaty, it would take months with an un-upgraded Ha'tak to get there and a little over two months for an Anubis upgraded one and most of those are in the Free Jaffa hands" explained Davis

"Have we got a beat on more Anubis upgraded Ha'taks?" asked Jack, he knew that those ones were really the only thing keeping the Alliance from feeling the full weight of the Jaffa fleets, if all Anubis's ships in Alliance hands get taken out they can only build the un-upgraded ones. Currently Area 51 thinks they can upgrade a Ha'tak the way Anubis did but Homeworld Command is not keen on sharing that fact with the galaxy.

"Yes five are defending a Kassa distribution station, when the Hammond gets back we will be sending it along with Odyssey and the Sun Tzu to take it out" said Davis

"And who will be in charge of this operation?" asked Mrs. Xiaoyi hoping it was her countrymen

"Colonel Carter, she will be able to rein in the crew of the Odyssey and she has had experience in multi-ship engagement with the battle of Asuras" said Jack, mentioning the Odyssey because whenever the crew of the Odyssey takes on anything Lucian Alliance they usually take no prisoners. A side effect of the death of their highly respected commanding officer Colonel Emerson.

"Why three ships for one station?" asked Mr. Chapman

"The Kassa station is a former System Lord meeting station, its surrounded by the type of mines that allowed the attack and capture of the Odyssey a few years back, we have a plan to deal with the mines but it requires all three ships and nearly half of all missiles on the ships we are sending" replied Davis

"Alright, anything else?" asked Mr. Strom

"Not for the Lucian Alliance. So moving onto the Free Jaffa Nation. While with Gerak siding with the Ori during their crusade the traditionalist movement have had a downturn, but they are still a strong opposition in the Jaffa council with Teal'c and Bra'tac leading the charge against them to turn the Free Jaffa Nation into a true democracy and a working civilization, but they are still having problems with how it should be done" said Davis "There are many who think that the Council should only be made up of those with the largest armies, and there are few Jaffa who wish to even learn to read and write let alone anything more advanced. Currently there are only three Jaffa worlds that know how to make Ha'taks and half a dozen more who can make other ship classifications. Eventually the Lucian Alliance can make more ships than the Jaffa even if it isn't an Anubis upgraded one they will eventually win out"

"Anything we can do to help them out?" asked Mr. LaPierre, who usually dealt with Human worlds

"Only those worlds under Teal'c and Bra'tacs rule are even allowing us to teach them, all other worlds are just happy having our doctors help out but not when we approach the subject of building schools" said Mr Chapman

"So what we remove our doctors from their worlds and double up on the ones that allow us to set up schools" said Mrs. Xiaoyi

"Doing so would damage our reputation with a large majority of Jaffa and turn them on Teal'c and Bra'tac" speaking up for the first time the Switzerland representative.

"I Agree, so perhaps if we help build up shipyards in Teal'c and Bra'tacs territory and they begin to build the most ships in the Nation will get the others to consider allowing us to help?" suggested Mr. Harp

"That would require more than the minimum allocation of resources and personnel" said Ms. Xiaoyi

"Not if we get the Jaffa to mine it all for us, they still have a number of Naquada mines across their domain and I'm sure we can build more efficient shipyards than those available by the other powers, a hundred personnel to build up and teach the Jaffa how to make the shipyards then the ships and we should be good, no?" asked Mr. LaPierre

"And we can use said personel on our new shipyards when they come online right?" said the German representative

"That should be more than worth it, I put the motion to a vote"

"And I second it"

"All in favour?" With everyone raising their hands at the table they were done with the new order and it was now up to Jack to carry it out. But having more people make more ships was a good thing in his book.

"Alright next to the Pegasus" continued Davis "With Atlantis going back and Apollo and Daedalus being deployed there for the next month all that we know due to the few operations we were carrying out of the Pegasus Alpha site is that the Genii are attempting to reestablish their hold over a dozen human worlds, either through intimidation or using our absence as proof that we can't defend them"

"And they think they can?" asked Ms. Xiaoyi which cause a few smirks around the table

"It doesn't matter that they can't, we promised the Coalition of planets which now has membership numbering over a hundred that we can and will be the primary military arm in Pegasus and when we were just about to get going Atlantis had to come and defend Earth and now because Atlantis and all our ships have been missing from Pegasus for over a year we all look bad" said Jack

"Well what do you suggest?" asked Mr. Strom

"We come in blazing and take out as many Wraith Hive ships as we can to prove we can and will defend them" said a French Admiral, The French had decided to put their navy in charge of offworld activities unlike the Air force for most of the Countries in the IOA.

"That's all well and good but where do we find these Wraith ships? Only Atlantis has the capability of detecting them at range and we can't be everywhere at once looking for them, a galaxy is a big place" said one of the few scientists at the table

"We should leave Pegasus up to Woosley and Sheppard, they know the place they know wraith ships they know what they can do to get into the good graces of the galaxy" said Jack

"Alright but with Zelenka and McKay focused solely on the Tria they will have to rely on the seconds in Pegasus for the foreseeable future" said Mr. Strom

"When is the Tria slated to get back?"

"Should be already back or a few days out by our next monthly meeting" Davis replied

"So in the meantime if they haven't found anything that needs to be studied right away on the Tria we can send McKay and Zelenka to Atlantis for a month?" suggested Mr. Harp

"Yes if nothing of vital importance comes up on the Tria that is what we will do" confirmed Ms. Xiaoyi

"Alright if that is it then we are done here correct?" asked Jack hoping to get out and to the cafeteria as fast as he possibly can

"Yes" said a number of people around the table

* * *

 **The Tria, Galactic Void**

 **Same time**

Carter and McKay were hashing it out in how best to remove the side of the Tria so as to fit the Asgard hyperdrive, Carter figured some of the Asgard tow beams recently a standard on all Tau'ri ships could be used to remove the large section of hull if modified a bit. Whereas McKay thinks that it is to risky and that a more precise tool is needed. In the bridge was just Carter, McKay, and Sheppard.

"It will take months McKay we want this done in the week so we can send Atlantis back to Pegasus" said Carter as Atlantis was seen out the front of the Bridge. The city was meant to drop off the necessary personnel and keep moving but with the task in front of them it was decided to have Atlantis stick around.

"And if we do it your way we could be damaging the lines of wiring around the compartment we are trying to remove" said McKay

"Maybe use some C4" said Sheppard, eating in the captain's chair.

"C4 doesn't have the necessary power to punch through the Tria's hull, the armour there is some of the thickness on the ship" said McKay ignoring the obvious attempt to set him off by Sheppard.

"Why would the armour be thickest for a Drone launch bay?" asked Sheppard as Zelenka followed by a young man with a Canadian flag on his uniform walked into the bridge

"We found something amazing!" said Zelenka

"Who's we?" said McKay turning around

"Second Lt Cole what did you find?" asked Carter recognizing one of two Canadians assigned to her ship, he entered and offered her a crisp salute.

"Ma'am I was just looking through the Tria's computer with the link you set up when we arrived and I came across that the Tria is designated a Command ship…" started William

"So what?" interrupted McKay ignoring the fact that he was his countryman

"McKay shut it" said Sheppard "Go on"

"Sir a Command ship would be where an Admiral would command the fleet as well as being the ship that would replenish all other vessels in the fleet with drones" said William

"Wait this ship has more drone bays than the Orion?" asked Carter, she was thinking that they emptied the known drone bays months ago when the Apollo came by to pick up the control chair. While there wasn't much drones it was still a nice boost, but if there were previously unknown drone bays then that would be even better.

"No this ship actually has less" started Zelenka who was one to mainly work on the Orion before its demise "But that's not the best part, tell them Cole" everyone looked to William

"Ma'am the Tria builds Drones, its a factory/Battleship hybrid" answered William as everyone's eyes in the room widened

"Wait we got a drone manufacturing ship right here" said Sheppard

"Yes Sir"

"McKay why didn't you find this!" Stated Sheppard

"I was focused on installing the drive!" he said turning to the control console behind him and vigorously searching for the area of the ship responsible for drone production "I can't find anything in here"

"Ma'am if I may?" asked William looking to Carter

"Go ahead Cole"

"The Tria was under the command of a Commander and not an Admiral level Commander as such its drone manufacturing capabilities were locked down, you have to do a walk around to get the schematics including the Drone factory" said William first moving to ship classes then to Aurora class, then Command class than to drone manufacturing. The highlighted area covered a large portion of the aft section of the Tria.

"My God" said Zelenka who is seeing the schematics for the first time.

"How many drones can this thing make?" asked Sheppard

"With a steady supply of resources a hundred a day" responded William who backed away from the console letting McKay access to the schematics

"Well thank god we didn't remove Section 15" he said. Carter was at the neighboring console bringing up the same schematics.

"Requires weapons grade naquadah, highly refined neutronium, and trace elements of other heavy elements easily found" said Carter

"So we can start up the factory" asked Sheppard

"We need to break the lockdown on the Command ship, but if we do then the shortfall is the highly refined neutronium" replied McKay

"Nice job Second Lieutenant" said Carter looking to William

"Thank you ma'am" he replied

"You find out anything else interesting in the databanks?" asked Sheppard genuinely curious

"An ancient transport ship six kilometers long" replied William

"Damn really? Why do they need a ship that big?" asked Sheppard

"Its an older design they may not have used it after the plague had nearly wiped them out" respond William

"Hu... well a question for the historians then" said Sheppard "So we gonna go see the factory or not?"

"The thing is at the back of the ship gonna need to use the transporter booths" said McKay "Closest one is…"

"This way" said William, he knew where it was as he used it to get here. Eventually they all got to the factory floor, if it can be called that, William tagged along cause it was his discovery he wanted to check it out.

The factory was massive starting from the bottom of the ship to the top, no floors just a large open space. Easily over three hundred meters high and six hundred meters long the factory was mostly made up of long cylinders and inside, McKay said, was where the drones were built, the long assembly lines started at the edges and eventually ended at the center of the room where the drones would be transported to the drone bays. The cylinders were supplied with other factory parts at the bottom of the vast cavern and where, Carter said, the supplied materials were manufactured into the necessary parts.

"Well this is amazing if we can replicate this we got a steady supply of drones" said Sheppard

"The problem is this highly refined neutronium, I've sent a cross reference to the Asgard core installed on Atlantis" said McKay the actual core was still on the Odyssey and only Area 51, the SGC, and Atlantis got a complete copy, all other cores only had the basics of what was needed to run the ship, any more would create the subspace disruption that allowed the Ori motherships to track the Odyssey. "And this neutronium is even more refined than the Asgard usually use…"

"Isn't their tech based on neutronium?" asked William

"Yes but they never had to refine it to this degree, I can't find a method the Asgard used to mass produce it to this degree" said McKay

"So we use the Ancients method. Easy" said Sheppard

"No like the ZPM's we have no clue how they made them. Atlantis doesn't have it in their database because they never made any more once they arrived in Pegasus" said Carter

"Wait I never heard of this, weren't they in Pegasus for millions of years?" asked Sheppard.

"They were there for a little under a million years before the Wraith emerged, they never relied on ZPM's because they were so hard to produce and as such the method to make them was never in the Atlantis database" said Carter

"But they can make drones, they made drones. Why isn't the method for the refined neutronium in the database?" asked Sheppard

"No clue" admitted Carter

"Great so we need to use the Asgards method in refining this neutronium and what? We get a drone a day?" asked Sheppard

"Maybe, maybe we can use our mass producible neutronium and we get a less powerful drone" said McKay

"Well a less powerful drone is better than no drone at all" said Carter

"Well this was a great discovery, but we need to get back to figuring out how were gonna remove the Tria's hull" said McKay

"Well the Asgard tow beams are still the best possible way" said Carter

"And it is one of the least precise options" started McKay as the two got into it William walked up to Zelenka who was at the factory computer looking at it.

"Are they always like that?" he asked

"Yup"

"So what? there trying to remove some hull section of the Tria?"

"Ya quite a bit as well using normal plasma torches would take months" replied the Doctor

"Well if there looking for precise why not use Drones?" asked William

"Wait... What do you mean by using drones?" replied Zelenka

"Well Drones are meant to burrow into a hull, so if they make sure they don't blow up and only use the burrowing ability a good pilot could cut out the section of hull. Right?" asked William who now noticed everything was quiet, turning around Carter and McKay were looking at him with thinking expressions

"I see no reason why it wouldn't work…" started Carter

"Ya a few changed to its code and getting Sheppard to pilot it…" added McKay

"And when they run out of energy we can pick them back up…" finished Carter "Good idea Second-LT I knew bringing you aboard was a good idea"

"Always here to help Ma'am" said William straightening his posture.

* * *

 **P4T-3G6 (Vis Uban)**

 **A week later...**

"Why are we always digging for things" said Vala as she looked to her nails, attempting and failing to clean them.

"Vis Uban the suppose to be capital of the Ancient Empire when they were in the Milky Way before the plague broke out forcing them to leave" said Daniel as he was looking onto a pillar covered in Ancient. SG-1 now consisting of Mitchell, Daniel, Vala, and Captain Hailey. They were on the planet looking through a newly discovered area in a cave that the nomads living on the planet found and told the SGC doctors that come and check up on them once in awhile, now SG-1 was looking through the discovered cave.

"And possibly where we can find cool Ancient dingy-mabobers" said Mitchell.

"Well why would we need dingys we got two of em with us already, right darling" said Vala smiling and winking at Hailey who gave her a distasteful look.

"Specifically we are looking for Ancient databanks hopefully left over with the knowledge on how to make ZPM's and the highly refined neutronium needed for the Drones" said Hailey

"I thought we could use regular neutronium" replied Vala

"They say they can but the weaker Drones will not have the ability to pass through shields as good the Ancient standard drones do, McKay estimated a fifty fifty chance for each drone" said Hailey looking at a different pillar

"Well fifty-fifty I would say those are better odds than a normal gamble, right Mitchell" said Vala smiling at Mitchell, thinking of their trip to Las Vegas a month earlier

"Ya sure, thanks for getting me on a list too. Now I can never go to another casino in my life" said Mitchell

"That is your problem darling, give me half an hour and I can fool any sensors" said Vala

"Facial recognition, not sensors" said Hailey "Hey Daniel can you confirm this translation"

"Hu interesting" said Daniel after a minute looking at the Ancient text on the wall

"What'd you find?"

"An link to the alliance of four races" said Daniel "an ambassadorial planet where they would meet"

"Thought that was Heliopolis" said Mitchell putting away his Tau'ri made scanner, based on the Ancient one, the Tau'ri one was slightly bigger and not as powerful, as such they found no energy signatures when they first arrived. Mitchell was just playing with the lifesign scanner.

"Heliopolis was for this Galaxy, this one… Eosopolis was the meeting place in the Ida Galaxy" said Daniel

"For the Asgard" supplied Mitchell

"Yep and the Furlings too apparently" said Daniel

"So the Furlings were from the Ida Galaxy as well?" asked Mitchell this was the first time since being on SG-1 that Furlings have come up.

"Maybe, maybe they left their home galaxy due to conflict like the Ancients did" said Daniel

"So they probably are extinct…" said Hailey

"Why do you think that?" asked Daniel surprised

"The Ida galaxy was ripped apart by the replicators and there was no mention of the Furlings in the replicator war that the Asgard fought" said Hailey "So either they are extinct or they ran far away"

"Well that's certainly a logical conclusion…" said Daniel

"Well do they say where in the Ida Galaxy this place is?" asked Mitchell

"Yup a gate address too" said Daniel

"What I see no gate address" said Mitchell looking at the wall of ancient text.

"Right here" said Daniel pointing to a weird set of dots and dashes

"Ancients used Morse code for gate addresses?"

"Nope that is a gate address based on the symbols used before the constellations, Destiny uses such addresses" replied Daniel

"Oh so its and old style gate"

"Probably, maybe that's how the Ancients found the Asgard, through the Destiny expedition" replied Daniel

"Well you learn something new everyday…" said Mitchell just as he heard zat shots, he turned only to see Vala down, followed by Hailey, Daniel, then he saw black.

A man in a coat walked up "Well we just got the famous SG-1 were gonna be rich" he smiled looking at them.

* * *

 **USS General George Hammond, In Transit**

 **A few hours later...**

It has been quite a mess since the news came down SG-1 was captured by slavers and will probably be sold to the Alliance for all the information they can take from them. The Tria's modifications were finished six days ago and the Hammond was in hyperspace heading back to the Milky Way ever since. All personnel not assigned to bring Tria back was brought back to the Hammond and they left, for William this means him, but not for Mark. So now it was just down to William. He was fine with that he knew it was only a matter of time till they split up, William was on a command track and Mark on the R&D so it would be best that Mark stick around the most advanced ship in this corner of the Universe and figure out how it ticks.

At the moment every high ranking officer onboard was in one of the larger conference rooms and William couldn't feel more out of place. To his left was the CAG for the Hammond, to his right was the Command Master Chief in charge of keeping the ship running at top efficiency and across from him were the officers incharge of different areas of the ship, weapons, damage control, and the marine compliment. And at the head of the table was Col Carter herself.

"Alright we are pushing our engines and will be back in the Milky way tomorrow and from there we will attempt to retrieve SG-1 along with the Odyssey and Sun Tzu" Carter started to break down the situation for the assembled officers "We believe they will be at the closest Alliance stronghold to Vis Uban which means at this moment they are a few hours out at standard Al'kesh speeds"

"Do we know they are on an Al'kesh?" asked the CAG

"We believe so, a Tel'tak will be too small to carry them and the twenty plus nomads they also captured" replied Carter "So when we will arrive we need a game plan currently the Odyssey is headed to the stronghold and will be arriving in twelve hours and the Sun Tzu will be camping out a few minutes by hyperspace from the stronghold" said Carter. With the Odyssey being the only ship that can maintain a cloak and shield at the same time due to some advanced technology that Daniel Jackson installed when he had the knowledge of the Ancient Scientist Merlin, currently no one can really figure out how he did it, even the Asgard when they were around couldn't figure it out.

"Do we know what we will be attacking?" asked the Master Chief

"Yes, the palace of the former System Lord Bastet" said Carter "This world was Bastets main shipyards so we expect a large complement of Ha'taks we should get solid numbers when Odyssey arrives in system. However we expect them to be held within the palace itself, the complex is as large as the Pentagon so we are going to be expending every squad we got from all ships to search the entire complex. We never got our spies into this stronghold so we don't know the layout" said Carter

"So the attack on the Kassa station is called off?" asked the weapons officer

"Yes for the time being, we will also have a time limit on our operation, half an hour from the system is the Kassa station so we expect reinforcements to arrive in at most an hour" said Carter

"So we got an hour to get in, deploy our marines and search a building the size of the Pentagon, find SG-1 to pull them out" said the Sergeant in command of the marines onboard.

"While us in orbit fight off however many are Ha'taks above the planet" added the weapons officer

"Yes our people are trying to think of widening that time window but currently that is all we got" said Carter

"Any suggestions?" asked Carter to the room of the probably best of the best in Earth's space navy.

"Do we have any Al'kesh remaining after our raid on the that Alliance shipyard a few months ago?" asked the CAG "If we drop a few off far enough out from the planet we can draw some of the ships away give us some breathing room"

"I believed we either scrapped the Al'kesh for naquadah or gave a few to some of our offworld allies" said Carter, with the amount of construction grade naquadah going into the Al'kesh they could build two flights of F 302s and with the Al'kesh being of a slower and weaker ship they were usually given to either human worlds or the Tok'ra. "And the few Al'kesh we keep around are all off on assignment to infiltrate the Alliance"

"Perhaps a multi-pronged attack ma'am" came Williams voice causing a few looks to him

"Such as?" asked the weapons officer directly across from him

"We send the Sun Tzu to raise the alarm at the Kassa station and when the stronghold sends reinforcements we attack, either they pull back the reinforcements letting us to take out the Kassa station or they give us our breathing room above the stronghold" explained William

"And what if they never send out reinforcements? We would be down a ship" said the CAG

"And we were going to attack that station with all three ships, with one they would be hopelessly outgunned" added the weapons officer.

 _That's true_ thought William _this plan never made real sense. Besides the Sun Tzu could never take on the five Anubis upgraded Ha'taks, unless it had…_

"If the Odyssey is going to scout the system that means the ZedPM is authorized for this mission correct?" asked William looking to Carter. With the ZPM being one of only a few the Odyssey was in the predicament where only a few missions it goes out on it is allowed to actually use the ZPM.

"That is correct" answered Carter

"Then we send the Odyssey, with the ZedPM boost to shields and APB's it will be at the very least even, with the correct plan of attack the Odyssey could easily take on five upgraded Ha'taks and any ships stationed there" said William "We will need reconnaissance on the Kassa station for the correct plan"

"Historically the Odyssey can take on multiple Ori motherships with a ZPM, Ori motherships that can take out Ha'taks with ease…" added the weapons officer, they were never really able to get any tech off the few Ori mothership wrecks that are around the Milky way and when Tomin took all soldiers and remaining Priors back to the Ori galaxy there was no negotiating with him, he didn't allow anyone to study the ships and with the supergate staying quiet they aren't expecting contact with the Ori galaxy anytime soon.

"I'll suggest this to Command, but I'll need a complete plan by the time we enter the Milky way second LT" said Carter

"With reconnaissance you'll have it ma'am" replied William

"Alright we will reconvene in a day where Cole will have his plan ready if it is not up to snuff we will go with ours" said Carter

Yes ma'am's were heard around the table as they rose and saluted Carter.

* * *

 **Part Two! I'm alright with this one. should be adding chapters with whats going on in Pegasus after next chapter.**


	3. Chapter 3

**P4T - 5G8 (Lucian Stronghold)**

 **Operation T + 10 minutes**

Mitchell was rather peed off, not due to his capture, not due to the beatings he's been subjected to, but the new rather cruel way that the Lucian Alliance personnel were using to try and break him. They brought in one of the nomads they have taken, a girl looking to be about in her low twenties, and they beat her in front of him, as they beat her he tried to break the restrains holding him but it is proving to be a fruitless endeavour. Say what you will about Goa'uld designs, their torturing harnesses are nigh unbreakable for the one person strapped into it.

"Tell me Cameron Mitchell, TELL ME!" shouted the tortured as he punched the woman in the stomach. To the right of the beaten woman, to far into Mitchells peripheral vision for him to make out sat a man. The man had said nothing since the beats began and what Mitchell figured was that the man was in charge of either this building, that had vague Goa'uld designs, or one of the Alliance seconds, a man who control vast swaths of territory.

"Tell me where you are building more of your warships!" shouted the interrogator again. The Lucian Alliance as well as the rest of the galaxy had no clue as to the proper designations for ships which is why they called the ships Earth uses as warships, really only those from Earth and possibly other Human worlds who never had contact with the Goa'uld could look at a working Daedalus class and call it what it really is, a battlecruiser.

"I will kill this woman if you do not, there are nineteen others Cameron Mitchell" said the interrogator pulling out his pistol and pointing it at the beaten woman who was on the ground. She had no idea what was happening, but she knew that these Tau'ri would help her as they have helped her brother when he was sick, she hoped they would.

"WAIT!" Cameron couldn't take seeing the woman be beaten and trying to think of something to delay it, apparently this outburst got the attention of the man, who got up from his chair and walked into Mitchells vision. Mitchell had never seen this man before.

"Do you know who I am?" asked the man looking to Mitchell

"A man with bad taste" replied Mitchell referring to the ponytail the man had, this caused the man to punch Mitchell in the ribs.

"I am Kefflin" said the man and Mitchell searched his memory and came up with a file that Homeworld Command had put every bit of knowledge they had about Kefflin in, it was a small file. Kefflin one of Netans most trusted seconds, the man Cameron once impersonated during a mission. It is only known that since Netans death that the reclusive Kefflin had reinforced his planets and that they expect that as high as twenty percent of all Lucian Alliance Ha'taks are under Kefflin's leadership. Kefflin supplies the Alliance with ten percent of it mineral output, thirty percent of its Kassa production, and fifty percent of its weapons and ammunition. Kefflin is one of the most powerful of the new Lucian Alliance. After the death of Netan and the few succeeding leaders the Lucian Alliance has turned into just that, an Alliance of powerful individuals each overseeing their own domain. Like the Goa'uld system lords before, yet more like the mafia families that have existed on Earth in its past. They supply each other with what each person needs and they stay out of eachothers way and Homeworld Command thinks that it is this way because Kefflin decided it.

"Oh... well hello" said Mitchell, a quick punch to Mitchells solar plexus really stopped any more words coming from him

"You are Cameron Mitchell, the man who impersonated me when Netan had his conference. Leader of SG-1, who made Netan look foolish and brought about his fall. My friends fall" Kefflin said punching Mitchell in the face "Now I hear you Tau'ri are attempting to attack my Kassa distribution station, I gave a lot to get ahold of that Goa'uld station" said Kefflin. Mitchell knew that the attack was suppose to be scheduled a few days after the Hammond got back from salvaging the Tria. So this was probably a leak somewhere in Homeworld Command which shouldn't have happened and it scared him, if there was a spy in Homeworld Command then there were people from Earth actively working against Earth.

"But I know that there is a weakness in your ships, the minefield surrounding my station. Enough of my own ships and I can force the Odyssey into the minefield and your ship will fall. So I sent ten of my Ha'taks and a two dozen more Al'kesh to take out this Odyssey" said Kefflin which surprised Mitchell, _does that mean the attack is happening right now?_ He thought "And when they arrive in twenty minutes your Odyssey is going to feel my wrath, maybe I will even get my hands on the ship" he said looking into Mitchells eyes smiling. That smile turned to a frown as alerts began sounding through the compound. Kefflin got up and walked out the door "Put them back with the others!" he said as the door closed behind him.

Two more heavily muscled people walked up behind Mitchell and unstrapped him. With only cuffs they were guiding him out the other door. This was his chance.

An elbow to the face for the guy to his right and a quick kick in the groin to the interrogator, that will teach him to hit a woman. With two disorientated, Mitchell charged the man to his left and fell atop him, head butting him Mitchell grabbed the man's pistol and quickly dispatched the three guards. Hoping that the alarm would hide the shots going out Mitchell grabbed the other two mens pistols and emptied them of ammunition. Removing his cuffs and keeping the ring of keys just in case Mitchell re-entered the room finding the girl still dazed on the ground.

"Come on, up. We're getting out of here" he said helping her up.

"Where are we going…" she asked still dazed. _Concussion_ Mitchell quickly figured

"We're getting you back home but you need to stay quiet and keep near me alright?" he asked looking to her, she nodded. "Alright let's go"

Walking out of the door Mitchell quickly figured the directions back to the cells that they grabbed him from. _Left, second right, left, third right, and end of the hall_ he went over in his head again and again. With being captured quite a few times as being part of SG-1 he had a knack for quickly finding his way around unknown structures. Turning left he found no one, but he heard others running his way from the first corridor he had to pass to get to the second right. Quickly pressing himself and the girl against the left wall, two of Kefflin's men armed with assault weapons came running past, not noticing him till it was to late.

"Hey!" He shouted to them as they were about midway through the intersection. Turning around Mitchell was able to nail headshots one after another, with less than ten feet between them it was cake walk for the veteran. "Glad that worked" Mitchell said aloud. Quickly raiding the bodies and not bothering to hide them Mitchell eventually made it to the room where they were locked up in, he knew there were people waiting on the inside as the room was a hallway and at the sides were the actual cells. So preparing the assault weapon Mitchell opened the door.

Inside there were two guards, each talking to each other thinking of what the alarm could possibly be and right in front of the door. This surprised both sides as Mitchell expected at least a fight but two quick bursts ended any possible resistance.

"Alright boys and girls time to get out of here" said Mitchell pressing buttons on every cell door he came across, at the end of the hall was the remaining SG-1. As the leader of SG-1 only Mitchell was tortured and so everyone else was fine, Daniel was the first to come up.

"You alright?" asked Daniel taking a pistol from Mitchell and a spare cartridge for it.

"Ya the Lucians upgraded to beating women now" said Mitchell motioning to the girl still clinging to him, she was still slightly out of it and the only thought that kept running through her head was _stay close to the Tau'ri they will help me_ and so far it was working out. "Alright Vala, Hailey get the the guards weapons, Daniel get the nomads prept to get out of here as fast and quietly as they can" said Mitchell and as the lead team, SG-1 went about their work with great efficiency.

With Mitchell, Hailey, Daniel and Vala all ready to go and the nomads in their assigned groups of five people each assigned to one person Mitchell asked "Anyone remember where the exit is?"

"We all had bags over our head remember" replied Hailey

"Actually this is Bastets palace…" said Vala

"You been here before?" asked Mitchell not really surprised, at this point he was certain Vala had broken into at least half of all vaults in this galaxy.

"When I was still the host of Qetesh…" said Vala trying to dredge up as much as she could remember from the time she really would rather forget.

"Alright you take point, Daniel, Hailey the rear" said Mitchell

The group of twenty-four people moved out following Vala, who for her playful nature most of the time was a professional when time came to escaping with their lives as well as the twenty extra nomads. Moving through hallway after hallway till eventually Mitchell, Hailey, and Daniel were happy to hear words that Vala had no really clue as to what they were.

"FLASH!" came the words from a corner, using the same code that had been in use since the Second World War Mitchell quickly responded.

"THUNDER!" he called out finishing the request and confirmation of allied status. Coming out of cover came five marines. Mitchell knew they were marines before they came out as it was only the marines and army that used the code. The leader came up to Mitchell and handed him a glock, the weapon was so much better than the Lucian idea of a pistol and Mitchell took it happily.

"Glad we found you sir, faster than planned" said the Sergeant marine.

"Thanks, great to see you boys, we got everyone here and the twenty nomads they took" said Mitchell

"Alright sir but we need to get out of here asap" replied the Sergeant "Milo get on the horn tell em we found SG-1 plus passengers" he finished looking to who, Mitchell assumed, was the marine named Milo

"So any reason you boys didn't beam us up right away?" asked Mitchell, like all personnel that leave Earth Mitchell had a subspace emitter embedded in his body. It allowed for easier pick up of personnel with the Asgard beaming as well as being able to track anyone as long as they are within a lightyear of a detector, like a ship.

"The Alliance seem to have figured out how to block it, we were beamed outside the compound and had to fight our way in, we need to get everyone out as fast as possible" said the Sergeant

"Why do we need to get out of here as fast as possible?" asked Mitchell as they entered the long hallway. The hall was on the outskirts of the compound so being a Goa'uld design there were large windows that looked out at the shipyards on the planet. And outside Mitchell could see streaks of light coming down from the sky "Comets?" asked Hailey

"Yup, whoever came up with this plan is crazy, just crazy enough to get Commands approval, we got half an hour before this place gets a fifty-fifty chance of being hit with the same stuff" replied the Sergeant just as a meteor hit a half completed Ha'tak shearing off one side of the pyramid and causing the webbing to fall to the ground setting off more explosions around that particular drydock. "Christ" said Mitchell seeing the damage caused by just one meteor and looking up he could see hundreds falling from the sky.

"Yup" replied the Sergeant

* * *

 **Deep Space, Near Stronghold**

 **Operation T - 10 minutes**

"Who the hell thought this was a good idea?" asked an F 302 pilot on open comms to the flight. He was currently in deep space maneuvering near a large asteroid, that his more scientifically oriented co-pilot says could be the same size as the one that killed the dinosaurs.

"That would be Second Lieutenant Cole" replied Crater, really no one knew where this plan came from but since he was friends with William he knew he was the one to come up with it.

Crater was also maneuvering near the same asteroid trying to get in the right position to deploy his tethers. When they were deployed and he confirmed they were locked in and he sent his ready status to the Odyssey.

"Who let a Second Lieutenant be in command of an entire operation?" asked another 302 pilot, this one was from the Odyssey so he had no clue who William was.

"He's not in command, Carter is, but then again why are we listening to the Canadians?" asked one of Craters friends, a pilot from the Hammond who knew that William was a Canadian

"Wait. A Canadian came up with this plan? I thought they were suppose to be nice and friendly!" shouted another over the comm.

"This is Odyssey Actual, I am still waiting for five confirmations, you are holding up the operation pilots, stow the talk till after we are done" came the voice of Colonel Davidson over the radio. The Colonel was in command of the Odyssey since the death of Emerson and was usually well going until an operation is underway and that is when he turns to a hardass, it is this duality that makes his men respect him. With the last of the 302's anchored Carters voice came over the comms of all the 302's as well as all three ships in the small Tau'ri fleet.

"This is Hammond Actual, You all know this operation is to pick up SG-1 and to heavily hurt the Lucian Alliance. It is also the largest operation carried out by only Earth forces. Do your home, do your country, and do you planet proud. The operation is a go"

Crater quickly dumped as much energy as he could into the inertial dampeners, he knew he would need it. Looking up he could see the underbelly of a Daedalus class ship, he knew it was the Odyssey, as this was her mission. To single handedly attack a station that had more mines than sensors could count. There were a few things going for them that Crater knew, the Odyssey had its ZPM activated, giving it a powerboost as well as making it the most powerful ship in the galaxy, they had the complement of both the Odyssey and the Hammonds F-302 fighter wings going to the station, and he knew that William was a smart guy, let alone the approvals from both Carter and General O'Neill. So Crater had hope and more than hope, he had two of some of the most powerful nuclear missiles created by humanity under his wings, he was ready.

A beam of white light emitted from the Odyssey's underbelly and struck the asteroid, then the Odyssey accelerated with the asteroid in tow and entered Hyperspace, they had a five minute ride to the station, then from there who knows what else.

And so five minutes later the Odyssey dropped out and alarms were blaring in every pilots cockpit. And as fast as they could the twenty pilots disengaged their tethers quickly abandoning the asteroid to formed up around the Odyssey herself along with the remaining twelve 302's that were being launched from the battlecruiser.

The Odyssey had come out of hyperspace at an angle slightly to the right of directly below the station, and as the defenders never really considered someone would come from such a direction there was a scramble to re-orientate the five Ha'taks defending the station. Then the Odyssey stopped its tow beams and let the asteroid fly, the defenders quickly realized what they were facing sent a message to the owner of this station who was only a few minutes away by hyperspace. Unfortunately the operator of that particular station was new and they only sent a single sentence message before being ordered back to get messages to the defending ships, that message "Under attack by Tau'ri ship Odyssey, request reinforcements."

The asteroids path took it directly where it needed to go, a few feet off from the stations side. Going at multiple times the speed of sound the asteroid slammed into the stations shield at the very bottom, bringing them to nearly fifty percent. This station had been built during the Second Goa'uld Dynasty nearly three thousand years ago and never in that time had the stations shields ever reached seventy percent of their full power. With the asteroid losing a significant amount of its mass to the shield and with the collision causing the asteroid to spin in the same way an out of control car would when you hit the brakes on an icy road, the asteroid quickly hit its Roush limit causing it to tear apart flying into a section of the minefield that the Odyssey and its flights of F 302's were following it in.

As the asteroid had flown into the minefield setting off hundreds of the mines the Odyssey was launching as many missiles as they could before the defenders realized what was occuring. Stopping its safety features every silo on the Odyssey's neck opened up and unleashed 16 missiles that quickly doubled and doubled again. The purpose of these missiles was to seek out any mines that the rocks missed as well as any asteroid parts that were redirected into the direction of the Odyssey when the asteroid broke apart, luckily only two chucks of the asteroids significant size were detected by the sensor operator aboard the flagship of Earth and were quickly taken out.

The F-302s that were flying around the Odyssey split into their respective flights of four fighters each and began about their duties. Three of the flights were tasked with taking out the mines that automatically moved to close the gap in the minefield created by the asteroid. Two flights, including Crater, banked and headed straight for the stations defenders, firing their complement of Mark Ⅷ missiles, a more compact Mark Ⅶ naquadah warhead that is able to be mounted on missiles, the missiles streaked out and hit every Al'kesh that the navigators of each 302 were able to target. Then with the enemy sensors blinded the F - 302's dropped their more volatile missiles, making sure to make them look like floating debris and returned to the fight. With the Mark Ⅷ missiles taking out a number of Al'kesh. The station and five Ha'taks disgorging more to the fight.

With the defenders somewhat stabilized along with the knowledge that a great many reinforcements were dispatched to help they were certain that the Tau'ri incursion would soon be repelled.

As things stabilized and F-302's were swarming over the defenders side taking out Al'kesh and Death Gliders the five Anubis ungraded Ha'taks beared down on the Odyssey, their combined firepower would bring any other shields down in short order, but the Odyssey had a power no one other than the Ancients could create.

"How long until we are free to go all out?" asked Colonel Davidson aboard the Odyssey watching the five Ha'taks fire at him. At the moment the Odyssey was sitting in what most would consider a death sentence, with the five Ha'taks above him able to bring their more armed underbellies, that are usually made to bombard a planet's surface, onto the Odyssey. "Five minutes sir" replied the sensor operator to Davidson's left. "Five minutes and the reinforcements have to either commit or return to defend" stated the officer remembering the attack plan.

"Great and keep me apprised of shields and our 302's" said Davidson as the shields were taking a pounding.

Outside the F-302's have just finished mopping up the last Al'kesh with their missiles and now were engaged in dogfighting with the Death Gliders. There were no casualties taken for the F-302's as the attack plan called for when attacking the Al'kesh to form up into a single line and take runs, each fighter covered by the one behind them and it worked. The same thing was the plan for taking on the Death Gliders but in smaller lines, unfortunately a plan never survives contact with the enemy and the battle of fighters quickling turned into the brawl.

But with the more trained 302 pilots who all of them were elites outside a 302 let alone inside one. Quite a few were veterans from the battle of Antarctica and a few actually from the lost Prometheus. It was a slaughter against the untrained mercenaries, who after seeing many of their number fall with no 302's lost cut it and ran, as you can never pay someone enough to die. Some were requesting permission to land at the station while others were leaving the battle and hoping to return when the reinforcements arrive, only a small amount remained and fought and then quickly died.

"Sir the time has elapsed and all Death Gliders and Al'kesh are either destroyed or have retreated to the other side of the station, no casualties from our 302's" said the sensors officer "Good time to clean up house" said Davidson and nodding to the pilot to his right the Odyssey rocketed forward straight at the unfortunate Ha'tak that took up its position in front of the Odyssey and out from the head of the Daedalus class ship shot the last gift given to Earth from the Asgard. The Asgard Plasma Beams impacted the Ha'tak and brought its shields down. Followed by a second shot then a third which ended the Ha'tak spearing the vessel through its entire superstructure. The sight of a vessel less than half the Ha'taks length and a fifth of its size destroying it would be slightly comical if you weren't the people on the other four Ha'taks who quickly scattered attempting to run from the deadly enemy that seemed docile just minutes earlier.

"Sir the reinforcements are confirmed to be still on their way" said the sensors operator as the last of the radiation from the opening nukes cleared and their sensors can see the Ha'taks move through hyperspace. Said sensors were found in the Asgard database and seeing how useful they could be the sensors onboard all Daedalus class ships were upgraded as much as they could be without a complete overhaul which would've put the vessel in drydock for months, this strap on of sensors caused them to not be a powerful as they could be, but just enough for the Odyssey to see the reinforcements coming.

"We need to finish this and prep our surprise" said Davidson as a second Ha'tak was speared by the plasma. Ten minutes later as the last of the Ha'taks were destroyed and all F-302's were aboard the Odyssey, while designed to carry half of what she is carrying now the Odyssey can still hold the 302's but once they landed they can't be launched in the standard way, so they can't be launched as long as the operation is still going on. So all fighters were effectively benched till they get back to Earth.

"How long till reinforcements arrive?" asked Davidson

"Sixty seconds" replied the sensor officer

"Fill up APB capacitors and bring us to Alpha position" said Davidson. Really the APB's might comes from fully charged capacitors, that's what brings down Ori motherships and Asuran Aurora battleships, but when the first four shots are fired from a Daedalus class' four APB turrets the following shots are only those powered by the amount of energy directed into the capacitors before they are fired again. While rapid firing has less powerful shots holding till the capacitors are re-filled, which with the un-ZPM ships is about fifteen seconds, has a devastating effect.

"Ships exiting now, reading ten Ha'taks and two dozen Al'kesh" said the sensor officer

"Are they in range of our surprise?" asked Davidson.

"Yessir"

"Activate"

And with those words sixteen of the most powerful missiles created by Earth reactivated and shot out at the unsuspecting fleet, the missiles were tipped with the Mark Ⅹ nuclear warheads. Enhanced with naquadriah the warheads possessed enough destructive power to destroy stargates and three of these missiles targeted a single Ha'tak. Another example of how a plan never survives contact with the enemy was what ships were targeted. The planner of this attack only suspected that the defenders would send out at most half of their fleet from the stronghold, but instead they send nearly seventy percent of defending ships So the missiles, following their pre-programed software targeted five of the Ha'taks while a solo missile targeted the most densely packed Al'kesh. With three times the amount of power that should destroy a stargate hitting the Ha'taks they were vaporized and a third of the newly arrived Al'kesh. Also as a side effect of the power of these missiles three of the remaining five Ha'taks had their shield lose over thirty percent of its power and all the remaining ships were in various states of disarray.

"Send a message, Leave or be destroyed" said Davidson. It was a kind of a bluff, really the Odyssey could take out the remaining ships but it had already lost enough of its shields at this point that the attack from the reinforcing fleet would have a bleed-thru effect and actually damaging the ship. So with an opening salvo that destroyed two thirds of the reinforcing fleet, the designer of this plan figured that they might just be too afraid to carry out their attack, and he was right. Thankfully the more zealous of Kefflin's followers were either on the station, unable to get a message to the remaining fleet due to the radiation, or they were destroyed in the opening moments.

So like a scared animal in the wild the remaining ships pushed their engines as fast as they could to get away from the Odyssey. "Alright, get a message to the station, tell them to drop shields and we will allow them to leave, if not we will destroy them" said Davidson. The original plan called for the complete destruction of the station at this point, but with the station not having any defenses Davidson raised his concerns and the ultimatum was added.

"Sir the stations shields are lowered and they are asking us if they can leave with the three Al'kesh they have onboard" said the Sensor officer

"As long as they don't bring any Kassa and the Al'kesh shields are lowered" replied Davidson

"They have agreed sir"

And so forty minutes and the destruction of ten Ha'taks an unknown number of Al'kesh and Death Gliders the Kassa station was destroyed. The plan that originally called for dozens of Mark Ⅹ missiles and three ships was accomplished with eighteen missiles and the Flagship of Earth's fleet with no casualties.

* * *

 **USS General George Hammond, Near Stronghold**

 **Operation T - 10 minutes**

William was on the bridge of the Hammond to the left of the main window looking at the monitor which showed the ready status of the 302's that were coming online one after another, to the right of the listed 302's was the sort of chat that had been going on in the pilots channels, their words were dictated by the computer and shown, then the dictation was stored in the Hammonds blackbox. He wasn't really looking at it and more lost in thought the pensive look on him made the other bridge staff stay away, except for the commander.

"You ready?" asked Carter coming up to William who missed what she said and only looked at her before her words fully became coherent and he answered.

"Kinda too late for that question ma'am the rocks are already in place" replied William smiling at the Colonel.

"Well it doesn't hurt to ask, especially because this is your first battle. Everyone in the fleet has at least fought once while you haven't even gone through any simulations." said Carter

"Yes ma'am. I was suppose to go through my first simulation as weapons officer on our way back from the Tria but that was before the news came down SG-1 was captured" replied William taking a glance to the weapons officer in his seat, most likely getting prepared for the fight to come and confirming the automated programs that were needed in the opening bouts of the battle.

"So are you scared?" asked Carter smiling, it was a reassuring smile, most definitely for Williams sake if anything.

"No ma'am, the plan seems reasonable and the…" said William looking to Carter who had an expression that asked the question "Really?" So William responded on how he actually feels.

"Yes. This is my plan should anything not go as I figured, should the person who owns the station not follow the standard Lucian Alliance tactics, should the person who owns the station actually be a rival of who owns the stronghold then we are wasting our best asset and will have to fight off fourteen Ha'taks and three dozen Al'kesh with just two ships and sixteen 302's. Should they figure out the ruse, then…" William was about to go on when Carter placed her hand on his shoulder, that silenced him.

"Your plan is pure genius, I wouldn't have accepted it if it didn't have the highest chance of success. General O'Neill wouldn't have accepted it if he even thought that it brought an unnecessary amount of risk" said Carter "And I have to admit, using asteroids in a fight and the ways that you used the technologies that you just found out a month ago, it is pure genius." The encouraging words did wonders for William, and though he didn't know it, he stood straighter thanks to the them "I have to admit, most battles above a planet are usually in geostationary or at the very least halfway there, going any lower and one would need to use their engines just to keep them up and in the fight, most would think that it is a weakness but you used it for your advantage in this battle. Like I said pure genius" admitted Carter

"Thank you Ma'am... maybe some of them don't figure as much" said William motioning to the sort of chat box and in it was a pilot with the callsign Windspeed, most likely a nod to an embarrassing thing that happened during training, had said "who the hell thought this was a good idea?"

"They're pilots they like any crazy thing they can tell stories about later, it's just someone trying to figure out who came up with the idea" said Carter

"Ma'am all 302's are reporting ready and the Odyssey and Sun Tzu are as well" said Marks, the sensors officer on the Hammond

"Alright, give me the fleet" said Carter

"You're a go"

"This is Hammond Actual, You all know this operation is to pick up SG-1 and to heavily hurt the Lucian Alliance. It is also the largest operation carried out by only Earth forces. Do your home, do your country, and do you planet proud. The operation is a go"

Looking out of the window William saw the Odyssey's tow beam hit the asteroid and then quickly accelerate into hyperspace. The bridge was silent waiting for Marks to give the go ahead for the Hammond to get into the fight.

"Alpha package has drawn away five Al'kesh" said Marks, which was more than William figured

Unseen by everyone in the fleet five Al'kesh were moving away from the planet to a distance about the same as the Moon is from Earth. There they were waiting for a peculiar grouping of asteroids, three in total, that are headed for a near pass to the planet that was their charge to defend. The Goa'uld computer crystals onboard both the Al'kesh and every sensor in the system analyzed the rocks and their orbital trajectories, pegging them as visitors from then systems oort cloud, they merely stated that they had a small chance of hitting the planet. Not since the First Goa'uld Dynasty, when some of the more bloodthirsty Goa'uld used rocks for planetary bombardment, had any system identified rocks that were purposefully thrown at the planet, and if the rocks had a trajectory that lead outside the system and were moving at incredible speeds the system would have identified them. But because the planner of this operation thought that there was a possibility that rocks headed straight for the stronghold would have been to suspicious they were instead put on this specific flight path, the planner actually never knew of the hidden subroutines, in fact of everyone in the galaxy only the Tok'ra had a small page dedicated to the subroutine in a crystal somewhere on their new homeworld.

The five Al'kesh were waiting, not really wanting to go chase after the rocks, and besides they were coming to them so it was all good. Unknown to them using the rocks as shielding against the sensors six slammer missiles, the same that could be found on the vessels that patrol Earth's seas but slightly different, came alive. When the Al'kesh were about to be inrange the missiles shot out at speeds only dreamed of by the captains of said Earth vessels, they slammed into the stunned Al'kesh who because of their rather simple mission never had the shields more than the standard for just waiting around, at five percent. The standard was a relic from the Goa'uld origins of the vessels as the largest threat to the vessels in a system with no enemies was just micrometeorites that were easily dealt with by the armour but the system lords who lived for thousands of years knew that the ships would eventually become damaged by the micrometeorites so the shield was kept at five percent to stop any and that five percent was not useful against the slammer missiles with two a piece three Al'kesh lost their power plants and were venting atmosphere. The two remaining quickly began firing at the rocks who had betrayed them so.

Before the staff cannons hit the rocks they reacted again, this time an explosion rocked them. The shaped charge was placed and detonated in such a way that it first pushed the asteroid onto a different orbit, then shattered them into chucks no bigger than seven feet across. Stunned the two Al'kesh attempted to take out the rocks that quickly doubled, then doubled again, and again, and again, and again.

The now hundreds of rocks began moving toward the planet that already had something suspicious appear at two points in its orbit.

At low orbit far away from the stronghold the USS General George Hammond dropped out and immediately began burning its sublight engines as hard as they could. The sublights on the Daedalus class is fused with its anti-gravity drives, meaning they are both wrapped up into one engine while for its predecessor, the Prometheus, they built the two engines separate, this is due to the Goa'uld having their two engines separated as they were never able to hybridize the technology but with the Asgard technology for the Daedalus class allowed the two engines to be harmonized but that is neither here nor there.

The sublight engines are actually a reactionless drive system while engines like Earth rockets are not, the sublights through advanced physics, for lack of a better term, push against space-time. The actual mechanics for such a feat are known only to the most advanced physicists employed by the SGC and a few smarter individuals across the galaxy. Now the most important consequence of pushing against space-time for acceleration is that the vessel will be a kind of anchored to space-time itself and this has a weird effect on all ships using the engines. For a ship to be anchored to space-time it had interesting effects, one such effect is that there is a cap on how fast the ship may be and for a ship to remain at a constant speed a constant supply of energy is required, which is why for having a velocity in the higher relativistic speeds requires ZPM levels of power. Another effect is that when a ship moves closer to a mass field, aka a planet, the speed cap is reduced greatly making the most stable place near a planet in or around geostationary orbit, while the lower a ship goes more power is required to keep the ship at a speed for a true orbit. However if they were to shut the sublights down and remove all power from them the vessel will be un-anchored from space-time allowing it to function like a normal rocket launched from Earth.

The actual engines seen on Earth vessels and other advanced ships are due to the power of the sublight engines used. The engines produce quite the amount of heat so most species with a reasonable idea of spaceship design and wishing for powerful sublights cool the heat with anything available, for Earth vessels it is nitrogen which is stored in a liquid form for both atmosphere on the ship and used as coolant for the sublights. This nitrogen is then expelled out the back of the engines causing that yellow glow.

Now normally the superheated nitrogen cools quickly and dissipates in the void of space, but due to the power that the Hammond is pushing into its sublights the nitrogen expellant actually caused an engine plume of the heated element a few meters long, making it quite a sight. The reason for this is the Hammond needed to push it sublights hard to get the speed needed to remain in the low orbit which means it accelerated from the 0 m/s relative to the planet when it exited hyperspace to the 9000 m/s it needed to keep the low orbit. While nipping at the upper atmosphere the Hammond swung around the planet in its ridiculous 20 minute orbit, the orbit is in fact impossible for the Hammond to maintain, if it remained in such an orbit it would break away from the planet and fly off into the system at incredible speeds. When the Hammond had achieved its unstable orbit all the power was cut from the sublights effectively cutting the ship off from its anchoring to space-time forcing it to take into account relative velocities with the defenders. Then the maneuvering thrusters across its hull fired in such a way that it flipped head over tail so that it was moving forward backwards. But that is what the planner had in mind.

Flying past the area of the stronghold in less than a second three things occurred at the same time, all three without Colonel Carter's approval, as to ask would cause the window of opportunity to pass. So in the less than a second that the Hammond was both above the stronghold and beneath the defenders who were facing off against the Sun Tzu in geostationary orbit three things happened.

The first was that computer identified ten insertion points across the compound where they could deploy their marine compliment. When the Odyssey arrived a day ago and scouted out the stronghold they realized that the Alliance must have gotten hold of Ba'als old beam jamming codes, so with the compound under a blanket and the Odyssey unable to beam out SG-1 right then and there this mission had to occur. Once the ten points on the compound were identified, which took the computer less than nought point zero zero nine seconds, in the next hundredth of a second the marines from both the Hammond and Sun Tzu were beamed to their destinations and they went about their task of finding SG-1.

The second task that the Hammond computers did was open the missile bays and designate targets, the Hammond was in such a situation that for the sixteen missiles prepped to launch they were all targeted at the Ha'taks still above the planet, which numbered at four as well as ten defense satellites which hovered close to geostationary orbit. This step actually took most of the time the Hammond was above the stronghold and was somewhat of a special case as the programming onboard the Hammond had to be modified so as to allow it to keep the targeting lock through the last part of the opening bout.

The reason the Hammonds targeting systems had to be specially jury rigged was due to when entering hyperspace all weapon systems are shut down so as to conserve power, this included the tracking software. So for the third task that the Hammonds computers did was activate the hyperdrive.

Breaking the cosmic speed limit can be done in a number of ways, the way most advanced civilizations used is the hyperdrive. The drive consist of two distinct parts, the first can be anywhere within the ship as it doesn't need to have access to empty space, it could be next to the fridge if one really desired it so, this part was the hyperspace window generator which made the crack in reality that gives ships access to subspace. The next part that plays a role in this plan is the hyperspace engines, these engines are what push the ship when flying through subspace but they can also operate in normal space as long as a hyperspace window is open nearby spewing out its exotic radiation, these engines working in normal space push the ship to relativistic speeds that the sublight engines couldn't without ZPM levels of power, the relativistic speeds allow it to break through the hyperspace window and enter subspace. What happened this time was that the hyperspace window opened, allowing the engines to work, then the engines activated for nought point four seconds accelerating the ship forward at twelve thousand five hundred meters per second per second. Then after the nought point four seconds all power to the engines were cut and the hyperspace window closed, the exotic radiation coming from it will stick around for awhile and slowly dissipate but it will never be enough for hyperspace engines to work.

With the zero point four seconds of acceleration at twelve thousand five hundred meters per second per second it gave the Hammond 5000 m/s in the opposite direction of its orbit giving it a grand total of 3 kilometers per second, the exact same orbital velocity as the defenders. Quickly bringing the sublights back online, doing so when the Hammond was moving at 8000 m/s would have left next to no power remaining for weapon systems and a fully powered shield, so now that it was moving at the standard constant for this mass-field the sublights worked like they usually do.

"Fire" said Carter, after the massive amounts of changing acceleration which pushed the inertial dampeners to their max the people aboard the Hammond were a bit shaken and it took a moment for the weapons officer to actually press the 'fire' button.

So out of the Hammonds sixteen VLS missile tubes came sixteen standard ship-to-ship missiles, these missiles weren't the nuclear kind but they were still special in that they were naquadah tipped. The missiles provided equal destructive power to some of the smaller nuclear weapons available on Earth without actually being a thermonuclear reaction meaning they were powerful enough to significantly damage the Ha'taks shields. After the opening salvo launch the weapons fire coming from the Ha'taks and satellites were split between the Sun Tzu and the Hammond making it too dangerous to launch more than one missile at a time, but at this point the Death Gliders and Alkesh would have shot them down so the only ship-to-ship missiles in this fight were just fired. Also at this time the Sun Tzu and Hammond deployed the remaining fighters, sixteen in total, they were designated a protective stance so as to allow the Daedalus class vessels to focus on the capital ships and ignore the Al'kesh and Death Gliders. Now with the Hammond in range to pick up the teams on the ground and the Sun Tzu able to draw a good portion of the fire two ships moved around their designated area, never to far from helping each other or the people on the ground.

The fight went on for ten minutes, with three satellites, one Ha'tak, and a number of Al'kesh destroyed till all teams were out and back aboard the Hammond. Then the two ships left the system leaving a destroyed shipyard and eventually a heavily damaged stronghold. The operation was a full success with a few damaged 302's and some dents on the Sun Tzu's hull caused by the bleed-thru effect. It was a resounding success.

* * *

 **I really like this chapter! Some of the technology explanation is me trying to give a reason to some of the things we've seen on the show and I think I kept it pretty reasonable. Let me know what you think! Also I'm gonna try explaining some of my reasoning for what I've explained so…**

 **Chloe** **\- I figure for Atlantis and anything across what's left of the Ancients in the Milky way (including the Antarctic outpost) there would be no drone factories due to the simple fact that the Ancients were not at war when they made Atlantis or their outposts so there was no need for the large number of drone factories that would be needed during a war. As for the outpost drones I figure these are outposts that are meant to survive for thousands of years at a time solo (for the Antarctic one it was millions of years) so stocking them with millions of drones seems like a reasonable prudence that the Ancients would do.**


	4. Chapter 4

**Atlantis, Conference Room**

 **April, 2010**

The conference room was quiet at the moment there was really nothing that needed to be said the people of the galaxy seem to have completely removed themselves from anything to do with the Atlantis expedition. Out of over a dozen trading partners that the expedition had a little over a year ago only three have kept up the trade. Really the expedition could always get their food from Earth but it is imperative that the expedition keep up relations with the worlds of Pegasus, that was one of the mandates that the IOA had added to the mission statement when Atlantis left Earth. At the moment they were failing that imperative with the Athosians, The Protected of Borealis, and the kids from M7G-677 being the only groups that are happy to trade with Atlantis all others have shunned them.

At this moment Dr. Woolsey walked into the room around the table was Colonel John Sheppard, the commander of all forces in the Pegasus Galaxy, Colonel Abraham Ellis commander of the Apollo, and Colonel Steven Caldwell, the commander of the Daedalus, currently the two vessels are sitting on Atlantis' pier waiting for something to occur so they may unleash their might. Across the table from the commanders was Dr. Keller, head doctor of the expedition, really Keller and Beckett trade the title of head doctor whenever someone with said designation is needed. Also at the table was Teyla Emmagan, the Athosian had become the second highest civilian commander in all but name, the senior expedition personnel who make up over eighty percent of current personnel know Teyla and trust her immensely. The last person was Dr. Raffaella Esposito the doctor who was one of the first people to come to Atlantis after the initial expedition was launched and after working under Dr. McKay for the past few years she was inline to be the temporary Chief Science Officer till Dr. McKay or Dr. Zelenka get back from tearing the Tria apart at the Alpha site back in the Milky way.

"Let's get this meeting started shall we?" said Woolsey sitting at the head of the table.

"Just got back from installing the listening satellite over the Genii homeworld, works but it seems that the subspace signal is stronger than anticipated, its currently off till the Doctor can figure out why." said Caldwell, the satellite was the expeditions first response to the Genii's now militarization now there are five worlds apart of the new Genii Federation their people nothing more than people that pay tribute to the Genii who bully them with their advanced technology relative to the people of the galaxy. Sooner or later they would have to deal with the Genii but at the moment Atlantis had bigger issues.

"Wait why do we care if the signal is strong the Genii don't know what subspace is let alone detect a signal. Right?" asked Keller since being married to McKay a year earlier Keller had gotten to know some basics of the astrophysics that her husband talks nonstop about. Now that she was married she had hyphenated her last name so that her children might get the name Keller as she is the last in her extended family with the name. McKay when asking her father permission to marry Keller had agreed as he didn't really care, and really never thought about kids but people still called her Doctor Keller as Rodney has the name of Doctor McKay.

"You're right the Genii can't detect the satellite or subspace but the Wraith can, due to Colonel Sheppards imprisonment onboard the traveller ship and with him trying to contact us we know that the Wraith have shown a great capacity to detect subspace signals no matter how faint, so we don't want to draw the Wraith to the Genii homeworld by accident" answered Dr. Esposito

"That pretty much covers it, so doc can you fix it?" asked Sheppard looking to Dr. Esposito

"We will have to give it a once over if it is a problem in design or we overestimated our ability, it is really hard to compress a subspace signal to be as dense but undetectable as is needed for the satellite" replied Dr. Esposito

"Well try your best doctor" said Woolsey "Now... onto our situation with the Galaxy"

"My people are happy to have you back but Kanaan tells me that the fact we trade with you is harming his trading with other peoples" said Teyla

"And that is our current problem" started Woolsey "I've tried to call a meeting of the Coalition of Planets but I am told only a member can and we are apparently a non-member, similar to observer status at the UN, we can talk when a meeting is held but we can't vote or call meetings" said Woolsey.

"So can we get some of our allies to call a meeting?" asked Sheppard

"That is if we have allies…" replied Dr. Esposito

"Well at the moment none of our previous allies are really talking to us, however The Protected of Borealis are about to be accepted into the Coalition we can ask them to call a meeting on our behest" said Woolsey The Protected of Borealis, or as they were once called The Lord Protectors People were the people from the planet where SGA-1 found a similar city-ship to Atlantis, later finding out the name was Borealis, however with a royalty cast using the drone weapons to keep the others inline it was an uncomfortable mission. Eventually they brought down their only bargaining chip, the drones, and the people were able to vote for their leader and Mara being the last Lord Protector's daughter and a smart negotiator was given the right to rule by the people, however due to the fact that during the mission McKay had to deplete the ZPM powering the drones the Atlantis expedition provides a Mark Ⅲ naquadah generator that allows Borealis to use its drone stockpiles and protect the people from Wraith attacks.

"So how long until they can call a meeting?" asked Keller

"We expect them to be accepted in a weeks time, then we will ask them to call a meeting which will take three days or so to assemble" said Woolsey "In the meantime we need to prove we can defend them like we said so question is how we are going to prove that?"

"Well we got two ships out of seven in this galaxy, I'm sure they must realize that it is a significant investment" said Caldwell

"Well they actually have never seen our ships let alone what they could do" said Woolsey

"So what you want us to give a tour?" asked Ellis with an offended tone. Really he would do it he is both under the command of Sheppard and then Woolsey and the good soldier that he is he will always follow commands.

"Maybe but when we meet I would at least like to have a ship above us. If I have to pull that card out to regain our credibility I will be more than happy to do so" replied Woolsey, he may have been a lawyer before joining the IOA but during his time as diplomat and liaison between two organizations, the SGC and IOA, he had earned quite the amount of experience in politics so he knows how the game is played.

"Alright anything else?" asked Ellis

"Our friend in the stasis pod…" said Woolsey referring to the Wraith in there, Todd, it had been a year since he was intombed into the pod and only recently did anyone figure out what to do with him. Back on Earth the IOA wanted to dissect him but given that he was still technically alive at the time they really couldn't find any Doctors with the correct clearance to volunteer to perform the dissection even if he is a Wraith. Now however…

"Beckett and I believe we have perfected the retrovirus and at this point all we can do is a practical application for our movement forward" said Keller

"What makes this time different from the others?" asked Teyla, the first time they used this retrovirus it caused a mess across the galaxy in the name of Michael and every time since it was a mess.

"Well we have had a working relationship with Todd and we know he was looking to remove his Wraiths need on Humans to feed" said Woolsey " the IOA as well as I believe that this is the best possible way to bring a stop to the Wraith with the least amount of blood shead"

"So what do we do then?" asked Sheppard

"Well it's rather simple, we wake up Todd and start the treatment, it should take about three days for the complete transition" said Keller

"You brought the time down?" asked Sheppard remembering the transformation for Michael took weeks

"We aren't turning them into Human, we are turning them into a sort of hybrid that Michael utilized. They will still have the ability to manipulate their technology and they will still have albeit less of a healing factor we think they will even have a lifespan and age" said Keller

"Well really as long as they can still live and not have to take a chance whenever they feed I'm sure they will accept it" said Sheppard referring to the hoffan drug that was spread throughout the galaxy by Michael and now whenever Wraith feed there is a chance that the person they feed on was infected with the drug making them not only immune to the feeding but also deadly to the Wraith feeding on them. For the Wraith it really does seem to be the twilight of their race with a civil war raging across the galaxy and their only source of food being poisoned. If the retrovirus works then their race is saved.

"Alright but the question is whether Todd will accept it" said Woolsey

"Why wouldn't he? It is either this or we stick him back into the stasis pod" said Ellis

"Or just shoot him" added Sheppard, even with their long relationship Sheppard never actually had any feelings for the Wraith, in fact most of the time it was him holding back the need to shoot Todd.

"Well we can't just shoot him…" defended Keller

"Then what, if he refuses the treatment or the treatment fails we what? Release him? Let him feed on the people of the galaxy or do we just lock him up and let him starve to death?" asked Caldwell

"Alright then we give him the ultimatum… he either accepts the treatment, we allow him to understand every faucet of it and if he can point out any errors or possible fixes we take them onto account and after he is satisfied we perform the transformation" said Woolsey

"Alright then how fast can you get the materials together Doc?" asked Sheppard looking to Keller really he hasn't gotten use to calling her by her name, even if he was Rodney's best man. The scientist grudgingly admitted that he hadn't had many close friends when asking Sheppard to be the best man which made Sheppard's day. The whole wedding was an interesting affair, it was held on Atlantis after some convincing by Woolsey to the IOA and with the photographer, interestingly enough Chuck, having to make sure that the pictures didn't show much of the city. These photos would be distributed to family and friends outside the SGC and then there was the really glorious photos with Atlantis in the background that hung up in the married couples room.

"Will take a day or two" said Keller

"Alright then, tuesday we will wake Todd and go over the procedure with him" said Woolsey on Atlantis there really isn't any official weekend. Personnel that aren't military can take whatever time off they want but the people on Atlantis are so focused on their job and research that they really don't take holidays or weekends off. Of course there is the exceptions, Christmanss and the like, but really there isn't many who take time off which is why this meeting is taking place on a Sunday. "And lastly is the Wraith Civil war, Colonel Sheppard, if you would please" looking to Sheppard who, finally opened the folder in front of him. He didn't bother opening it for the first half of the meeting as he knew it was politics and science not items he is inclined to care about, at least not till it's needed to save his ass.

"What we figured out by the downed Wraith cruiser we got our hands on a few weeks ago is that the Civil war has been brought down to five different sides and by the size of territory and known hives it seems that two of them are about to be absorbed into the other three" said Sheppard.

The downed cruiser had actually been quite the amazing find, aside from a few stragglers all the darts died in the battle that damaged the cruiser enough that once it dropped out of hyperspace above the planet it planned to cull it broke apart and crashed. The Wraith technology experts on Atlantis, a Dr. Mundy and Dr. Jule, were able to download nearly half the manifest of the cruiser intact including a detailed dossier on Wraith biology, which helped Keller a lot, a list of current feeding grounds and which grounds were under which alliance, and interestingly enough planets where the Wraith grow their ships. The two Colonels have been dying to get permission to nuke the planets into oblivion with but the IOA is hesitant because of the technology that the Wraith are using to grow their ships, Ancient power generators. The generators are, according to the Wraith download, geothermal generators transplanted to a few newly formed planets that are rather volcanic and very hazardous to life. Which make it perfect for the geothermal generators and based on the limited knowledge on the cruiser the generators were taken from a destroyed Ancient factory world which is on the top list of places to check out. Also apparently the generators are so great that if one were to place it above the yellowstone supervolcano they could power the entirety of the American continent for the next hundred years. So the IOA is hesitant and apparently trying to draft a plan to get ahold of the generators that outclass anything the Asgard had come up with by orders of magnitude.

"So we are going to be dealing with a three sided Civil war soon…" said Woolsey

"Yes which I don't really like…" said Caldwell

"Indeed, with three sides it is a lot easier to come to terms than to keep fighting" added Woolsey

"So any idea how to make the war drag out for longer?" asked Ellis

"Aside from destroying everyone whenever they decide to meet up and make it look like they came to blows I've got no clue…" said Sheppard

"Maybe we won't need to worry about the war coming to an end…" said Keller looking down and sort of mumbling it, but everyone heard and looked to her

"Care to explain Doctor?" asked Woolsey

"The Civil war was because there weren't enough people for the Wraith to feed on, and if they don't need people to feed than the war no longer matters" explained Keller

"That's putting a lot of faith into your serem doctor, and I'd agree to it but there is the old adverb shake hands with your right hand while holding a stick in your left" said Caldwell

"Putting sticks aside, perhaps if we reconvene when the operation turns out to be a success or failure and go from there" said Woolsey

Mumbled confirmations we heard around the table and they moved on

"Alright in terms of the Ancient factory world, when should we be sending that out?" asked Woolsey

"I would like to have both ships to come. The world is in the middle of multiple known Wraith bases and we have no idea what will be waiting there when we arrive" said Caldwell, being the commander of the oldest ship in the fleet he had an elevated status to the officially same ranked Colonel Ellis

"Also having Colonel Sheppard would be a great help" added Dr. Esposito

"Don't know that you thought so highly of me doc" smiled Sheppard since Esposito's promotion to Chief Science Officer Sheppard had tried to become friends with the doctor as when he was friends with McKay he always had the inside scoop of the cool stuff coming out of the labs on Atlantis and to a lesser extent Area 51, now however he doesn't have such a source and for him the good looking doctor was much better than McKay.

"Actually it is the fact that you have the greatest CIA, Only behind General O'Neill himself" answered the Doctor, ignoring Sheppards kind hearted remarks. The ATA gene or Ancient Technology Activation gene is a specific gene that controls the release of proteins and enzymes that modify the nervous system and allows the people with the gene to control Ancient technology with their minds alone. There are multiple people that have the gene but the potency of the gene also controls the ease at which one can control the technology and such a level is determined by the CIA level or Chair Interface Aptitude, there were attempts to change the acronym to something not so similar to a certain intelligence agency but such things never came to fruition. At the top of the CIA is Ancients but since an Ancient had never taken the test that the SGC uses to determine level of CIA it is General O'Neill who is the benchmark and everyone else's level is determined in reference to O'Neill, Sheppard being the closest one.

"Well I'd rather stick around when we wake Todd up" said Sheppard

"I can use Doctor Beckett but I'd imagine he is needed here…" said Dr. Esposito as behind Sheppard is Doctor Beckett, strangely enough the fact that the Doctor is a clone didn't lower his CIA level it actually elevated it which is something that is still being researched.

"Well given that we may only have one chance to look at it before the Wraith get wind we know of the planet I would suggest we put the mission on hold till after we get confirmation that it will work" said Woolsey

"Alright, what else do we have?" asked Sheppard

"Actually that is it for this week" said Woolsey, the weekly meetings are something Woolsey insisted on since coming to Atlantis a few years ago and even if there was nothing to talk about there was still the meeting. Ever a stickler on protocol Dr. Woolsey is.

* * *

 **Atlantis, Stasis Pod Room**

 **Tuesday**

Sheppard entered the room with a squad of marines and Ronon who has his pistol out, Sheppard really wanted one of them but whenever he met with the Travellers who the pistol belonged to he never got around to asking for one.

"That better be on stun" said Sheppard to Ronon

"Your guns don't have a stun setting" said Ronon gesturing to the marines around him with their P90s.

"Our guns don't kill Wraith instantly" said Sheppard

"Fine" and with the click the gun was set to stun.

"Alright go ahead Jacks" said Sheppard nodding to the marine who was near the 'unfreeze' button and with a slight sizzling sound of the ice looking material that wasn't actually ice, interestingly enough according to the people at Area 51 it had a closer material makeup to silicon. With the sizzling done Todd opened his eyes and scanned his surroundings.

"Is this my execution Sheppard?" he asked looking to Ronon

"Nope. In fact we're here to help you" replied Sheppard

"Interesting... How?" asked Todd who through the feeling in his body he figured that he was asleep for at most a month, but he quickly dismissed it. He was use to Wraith stasis and not the much more advanced Ancient stasis.

"Do you remember Michael?" asked Sheppard

"One of your released experimentations" answered Todd which caused a slight wince from Beckett, who was at the back behind two Marines.

"Exactly" responded Sheppard "We got ahold of his research and we got your answer to not needing to feed ever again"

"What makes you believe this will be better than any other times both you and I have attempted such a feat?" asked Todd. He remembered the near death experience of both the attempted treatment and the crashed Hive that resulted, then being bitten by the Iratus bug to fix him.

"Well through Michael's research into a Human/Wraith hybrid by changing Humans into the hybrids, we believe we can go the other way and change Wraith into hybrids. You will still have all your natural abilities albeit hindered, but you will have a working digestive system" said Beckett stepping forward not saying that the little Torren Emmagan was actually a great help, turns out Michael was right in the importance of the boy.

"May I see this research?" asked Todd

"Of course it may be a bit for you to get the hang of all of it" said Beckett handing over the tablet that Todd reached for, but quickly stopped when the marines raised their weapons and Ronon turned off the safety for his pistol.

"Bloody hell boys… It's alright I'm good if he does try to feed on me it's a death sentence for him" said Beckett still holding out the tablet, and it was true. Micheal when making his hybrids and Beckett he not only gave the Hybrids greater strength but also gave them the Hoffan drug making them deadly for any Wraith to feed on them.

Todd slowly and hesitant took the tablet and began looking through the procedure.

"This could work…" he said after a minute "but what of the Queens?"

"What about them?" asked Beckett

"Your DNA base is Wraith warrior, the males of the Wraith species. The Queens have a great different DNA than Wraith warriors as they are the source" said Todd

"I… I haven't thought about it but it makes sense…" said Beckett

"How so? Doesn't make sense to me a Wraith is a Wraith" said Sheppard

"Wraith are birthed based on the Queens DNA Sheppard. Only modified to be a warrior through birthing pods and only the Queens DNA is the true source of Wraith DNA as should a Queen be birthed by a birthing pod then the birthed Queen has degraded DNA and should such a thing become common place Wraith will cease to be. Only a Queen birthed from another Queen can continue the species lest we be lost to degraded DNA" explained Todd.

"The same thing happened to the Asgard but instead of the different generations it was clones" said Beckett adding onto Todds explanation

"Wait so you don't need a Wraith dad and mom to give birth the regular way?" asked Sheppard

This caused a laugh from Todd, the strange, not quite alien but definitely in the uncanny valley of laughs "you know nothing of the Wraith life cycle Sheppard" laughing more which, though they wouldn't admit it, freaked out the marines "oh my, that was a great thing to hear Sheppard" he finished laughing "But this should work for all Wraith warriors but will need to be changed heavily for Queens" said Todd holding out the tablet to Beckett, the marines and Ronon tensed again, Beckett grabbed it.

"Alright then we can begin, Todd you know the drill" said Sheppard tossing the Wraith harness they had which kept the Wraith hands locked to their sides and unable to move their arms whatsoever when strapped in. Which Todd put on and had to wait for Ronon to attach the last of the clamps locking him in, which he did with glee.

* * *

 **Atlantis, Pier**

 **Night**

It was a clear sky on the planet Atlantis landed on, it wasn't Lantea and it wasn't even on M35-117 the second home of Atlantis since the expedition arrived six years earlier, currently Atlantis was on a water world that was at the edge of the Pegasus Galaxy and completely unknown to the Wraith. The clear sky showed the Pegasus Galaxy in all its splendor and what only a few astronomers from Atlantis have noticed is that when the shield is up, like it is at this moment, it blocks out all the light pollution endemic on the cities of Earth. So up above was the galaxy in its greatness as if there wasn't any light coming from the city of the Ancients. On the pier was Sheppard, Ronon, a squad of marines, and Todd. It was Todd's requests, after a more indepth look into the process he realized there was a small chance that he would not survive it so he asked to see the stars. Like the time when he was freed from the Genii prison he liked to see the stars. What the people of Atlantis and most Humans didn't know was for most Wraith commanders and Queens they actually have hobbies that take up their time and for Todd it was astrology, he used a great many telescopes he'd taken from destroyed human worlds for his collection. He even mapped out most of the Pegasus galaxy in his long life.

"Sheppard such a sight is never to be dismissed" said Todd looking to the sky

"Ya well, not into much space seeing myself, more of a beach seeing man" Sheppard replied which caused confusion from Todd, but not from Ronon, their year on Earth had resulted in many trips to the beach that Ronon was amazed at seeing what the women of Earth wear to the beach.

"Ah you know nothing Sheppard" replied Todd at that moment Sheppards radio came alive 'Colonel we're ready down here' came Becketts voice

"Alright Todd looks like sightseeing is over" said Sheppard which had gotten a confirming mumble from Todd who turned around and followed Sheppard back into Atlantis. A few minutes and teleport and they were ready at the operating theatre.

"Alright we're gonna remove your restraints then if you can lie down, we will sedate you and get ready, then in three days you should wake and be all good" said Beckett to Todd who had the harness unstrapped and lied down onto the table.

"Good luck Doctor" said Todd as the sedative was injected and he fell asleep.

It was a long three days for Keller and Beckett with stabilizing Todd the few times it was required due to the changes to his body and by the end of the three days Todd was greatly changed. His feeding organ was gone along with the pale skin endemic with the Wraith species still slightly pale but more toned and still distinctly alien, Todd still had his white hair and protrusions on his upper cheek. What changed drastically was that Todd looked visibly older, wrinkles and being slightly shorter were the signs that he actually aged years over the few days. Standing at his side was Sheppard looking over the Wraith that he had quite a strange history with, enemies and allies constantly shifting constantly trying to kill the other and save the other. He hoped that this time it would put an end to such things, a Wraith that doesn't need to feed and according the Dr. Beckett completely fine. The DNA of Todd wasn't degrading like before and wasn't slowly turning back like the time before that, an honest to god non human feeding Wraith, it could be the end of people fearing the Wraith across a galaxy.

Slowly Todds eyes opened, looking to Sheppard and around him "It appears that the operation was a success then" Todd concluded

"Aye it was, how you feeling?" asked Beckett coming in and taking his readings on the Wraith, there were two marines each carrying Wraith stun weapons.

"Sore… more than I should be, my healing should never allow me to be this sore…" said Todd who felt the worst he has in his long life.

"Well it should clear up, but perhaps not all of it, tell me Todd how old are you?" asked Beckett, this made Sheppard concentrate on the next words leaving the Wraiths mouth, he was interested as well with the knowledge that the Wraith are biologically immortal and with their periods of stasis Todd could quite possibly be really old

"I was there when we launched our first attacks on the Ancient Lanteans, I was there when we pushed them to their last city, I was there as we failed to destroy this city for a hundred years…" said Todd remembering the war, that knowledge shocked everyone in the room. Todd was over ten thousand years old that much was true and quite possibly the oldest living thing that the people of Earth have come across since the death of the Asgard.

"Well this treatment might have been the reason as to the sore feeling, you are aware that it could give you a lifespan" said Beckett ignoring the revelation from Todd he knew that the Wraith was old and looking at his cells over the last couple hours confirmed that Todd was older than most.

"Indeed, so I am dying of old age is it?" asked Todd

"Well based on your looks and my own readings I think that you are in the later years of your life, if I were to put a human year on you I would say in the late 60's early 70's" said Beckett "So while you may be getting weaker you will still have many years ahead of you"

"Wait so you led the armies against the Ancients?" asked Sheppard the fact of the age of Todd finally cleared through his thought process

"I was merely a weapon operator when we attacked and by the end of the war I was commanding a cruiser in the siege of the Ancient Lanteans" respond Todd. That was something that the Wraith seem to have done to the Atlantis expedition, they have given them the name of Lanteans, no doubt to the fact that they inhabited Atlantis when it was back on Lantea, but they also gave the Ancients the name of the Ancient Lanteans which was also strange. Yet unknown to the humans of the galaxy giving a name to a group of humans is something sort of respect for the Wraith, they know that the people of Atlantis are dangerous when they destroyed multiple Hives who were trying to attack them so they earned a name, that being the name of the world that they inhabit, Lantea.

"Well what about…" started Sheppard only to be cut off from Todd

"The past remains in the past Sheppard, only the future can be talked about, only the endless cycle can be consulted" said Todd not realizing that the endless cycle of sleeping then feeding can come to an end now that the Wraith no longer need to feed.

"Well we best let Todd rest and regain his strength" said Beckett leaving along with Sheppard. The two marines also left and the door was locked behind them.

Later the conference room had its table filled and around it were the same people as a few days earlier, but replacing Keller was Beckett.

"So Doctor can you update us on what is happening with Todd?" asked Woolsey

"He is exactly what we expected from our simulations, his digestive system is operating, albeit a bit less than I am happy with" said Beckett

"But he will live?" asked Sheppard

"Aye he will, and for quite a long time" responded Beckett

"So it works. Now what? We ask the Wraith to nicely change?" asked Ellis

"We set Todd up to take command of the Wraith and hopefully he can supply the necessary experts so that we can change Queens as well" said Sheppard

"Well it may not be that easy. We don't know what happened to Todd's alliance, most likely absorbed, so we need to find a way to get Todd another up on the Wraith" said Woolsey

"Well how are we going to do that Wraith respect strength and Queens both of which Todd doesn't have" said Caldwell

"Perhaps I may retake my disguise as Todd's Queen?" suggested Teyla causing unsure reactions from the people around the table.

"A Queen without a hive?" asked Caldwell "Will that not be even worse?"

"Then we get her a hive, maybe a few cruisers as well…" said Sheppard causing everyone to look to him

"And how do you suggest we do that?" asked Woolsey

"Well we wanted the Ancient generators, a Hive is a good place to carry them" At the implication of what Sheppard is suggesting eyes widened across the table

"We have no idea what we will be facing, we can't go and raid what basically is a Wraith shipyard all we really have is Todd and possibly Teyla who can run the ships" said Caldwell really he liked the idea, that is if he had the entire fleet of Earth with him but with only two ships and only two people that can control the stolen ships it is an exceedingly bad idea.

"Dr. Mundy and his team is working on an adaptor that will allow us to control Ancient technology that usually only can be controlled with the ATA gene if he can modify it to Wraith technology we can possibly take control any ship with the adaptor" added Dr. Esposito

"Boom we get the adaptor to work outfit our marines with em and we got ourselves a Wraith fleet and the Ancient Power generators" said Sheppard

"The operation is ridiculously unsafe, we could be facing thousands of Wraith on the planet and dozens of ships in orbit and who's to say they are building ships in the first place?" asked Ellis always the cynic and really at this moment the voice of reason.

"I am inclined to agree with the Colonel if the ships aren't even ready let alone building then we will be wasting our effort in coming up with a plan" said Woolsey "If we ever send out a reconnaissance then we can talk about a raid, but before then we need to think of a better way"

And they tried, from repairing the downed cruiser they found to finding and capturing a Hive ship they came up with ideas and when the idea had some merit went through a plan but such plans never made it far due to insurmountable obstacles that would either require technology that is experimental at best to unreasonable numbers of manpower. Yet everything they thought about failed when they game planned it out so they decided to shelf the idea till Todd could be consulted.

"Alright then onto our image problem" said Woolsey "The Protected of Borealis were accepted into the Coalition of Planets and in fact due to the drone weapons they have they are inline to be a great powerhouse for being one of the few planets that is safe from the Wraith"

"Alright, can we ask them to call a meeting?" asked Sheppard remembering the plan from a few days ago

"Well in fact they have already asked for a meeting, something about creating a better trading economy" said Woolsey which surprised everyone around the table. Trade has been the same around the Galaxy since the fall of the Ancients and now if the people are attempting to better it then that would mean a step closer to a true multi-planetary government. What they didn't realize was that this was Mara's doing as she had been quite the student and due to the number of economy and government textbooks that the Atlantis expedition have been gifting her and she has had quite a large amount of knowledge compared to the rest of the galaxy, actually starting a common schooling system on their world that they named after the city-ship Borealis and with being protected from the Wraith the people of Borealis are really inline to advance fast with the help of the expedition.

"Great so when we going?" asked Sheppard

"I will be attending it in three days time, I just require some preparation" said Woolsey

"Well what kind?"

* * *

 **M5G - 9T8**

 **Three days later**

M5G - 9T8 had a healthy layer of snow as it was the middle of winter for the planet while back on Earth it was the middle of April. Really the planet was not when their meeting was going to take place but it still brought a frown to Woolseys face when he stepped through the stargate, still in his suit he didn't really think that such a place would be the rendezvous. This was what occurs every time the Coalition meets, each party is given an empty planet to meet at and a guide takes them through several gates before arriving at a specific destination. The guide was a rather short man compared to the Atlantis expedition, in fact that was what most people of the Pegasus galaxy are compared to the Tau'ri aside from the few exceptions as there are always exceptions. Some biologists have put their shorter stature due to the primitive lifestyles they live as well as their evolutionary history. Though the people living today don't know this but the reason that the Pegasus humans look and are so alike with those from the Milky way is due to some Ancient genetic modifications. Really when the Ancients left the Milky way a million years ago they took the entire genetic repository of the living animals at the time this included the human ancestor _Homo antecessor_ , and with this repository they seeded the life across the Pegasus galaxy then after a few hundred thousand years and some Ancient modifications Humanity evolved across the Galaxy and the Wraith as well.

Back to the moment however the guide dialed the gate to an empty forest, and three more times till the entourage from Atlantis arrived. Among them was SGA-1 and 2 minus McKay, the science officer for SGA-1 was a new guy Lieutenant Garry Willum a young air force lieutenant with a degree in astrophysics, Sheppard was hesitant to have the guy but when he went toe to toe with Ronon at drinking long past when Sheppard would've passed out he was glad to have him, he still didn't beat Ronon, no one beats Ronon. Also among them was Woolsey and their hooded special passenger. The Daedalus would be standing by and at the moment it was sitting in the middle of space waiting, its Asgard subspace sensors pushed up to maximum actually allowing it to track the stargate wormholes from far larger distances than they could a ship moving through hyperspace due to the massive disruptions in subspace the wormholes cause. It was really only luck that the Daedalus was able to keep the moving party from being to far outside its sensor range. Eventually they finally made it to the planet and through a cave they came to an underground bunker that was here due to the Genii Federation, its location long forgotten by the Genii today.

The Atlantis expedition got three seats at the back of the meeting room, in the hall were hundreds of people representing the hundred and three planets of the Coalition of Planets. Some representing little more than a collection of villages while others planets with hundreds of thousands of people there was even a planet with a million individuals, usually any planet with populations larger than a few million were culled to ruin during the opening months of the Wraith awakening.

Overall the population of the Coalition of Planets didn't reach greater than the three hundred million of the United States of America, the end result of how the Wraith keep their livestock. The meeting was called to begin by the three heads of the Coalition, like the five permanent members on the United Nations security council the three were Latira the one world with a million individuals, the Tribes of Santhal the tribes are actually different peoples who have come to the planet Santhal that through its position in the galaxy is only culled by Darts and the Wraith Hives haven't made their way to the planet in a thousand years, and lastly the Free Peoples of Riva another world so far out at the edge of the galaxy that only Wraith darts arrive from time to time to cull the population.

"This meeting will commence" said Dimas the representative of Riva "Now the purpose of this meeting is a resolution put forward by The Protected of Borealis the one hundred and first planet to have been accepted into this Coalition, If the representative Mara could please step forward"

And this surprised Sheppard Mara seemed like such a young woman when he met her on Borealis but the woman standing up now was confident and strong, a real leader among the many leaders already in the hall.

"People of the Coalition of Planets, may I first begin by thanking you all for accepting my peoples into this Coalition and I expect that we may both help each other so that we all rise higher together" started Mara and with her opening remarks eyebrows raised across the hall, the new innitiants usually begged for help for one reason or another but Mara was talking about how they can help each other "I through the consulting of my council" another addition Mara had done when getting the textbooks on government, she made a sort of congress with every village getting the ability to send a representative to the tower and every town two. "Believe that establishing a single currency used throughout the Coalition and getting every planet in the Coalition to promise to only use such a currency based out of a bank owned and operated by the Coalition can not only increase trade but through the bank we can help our less fortunate planets and grow the more fortunate ones" said Mara really the people of the galaxy know how currency works but as was the problems after World War 2 in Europe there was just so many different currencies that it was basically useless. What was a new addition to the formula that Mara suggested was a bank owned and operated by the Coalition, such a thing was never considered before as like with most government banks on Earth they don't turn a profit but instead help grow the economy and are used to loan out money in times of need things and this simple purpose was something the people of the galaxy never considered.

There were a few skepticals "And how do you think a single currency and a Coalition owned bank will help all of our peoples?" asked Kelore the man from Latira, with a world of a million people Latria was one of the worlds that had a currency but outside of the world it was useless and trade done with Latria is through bartering.

"Because such a thing has worked before and works today, through texts given from the Atlantis inhabitants I have learned how such a system will benefit all and how together we stand higher than we ever can separate" said Mara and with the mention of the people of Atlantis there were audible groans from the people in the hall, and at the back Woolsey frowned slightly.

"If such a thing can work why have the Atlantis inhabitants not suggested such a system before?" asked Shiana the representative from the Tribes of Santhal, the venom in her voice still hasn't left since their imprisonment and trial and with Atlantis missing for a year it only had proven to her they couldn't be trusted.

"I believe we can ask them, Dr. Woolsey if you may" asked Dimas gesturing to the speaking podium where Mara is.

Woolsey stood up, straightened his suit and walked forward from the back with a purpose, for some of the newer planets it was the first time seeing the people from Atlantis and Woolsey was determined to make an impression. Coming to the podium which was both to the right of the three representatives and in front of the hall containing all others Woolsey nodding to Mara before taking her position at the podium.

"I can confirm that such a system is common place on both Earth and throughout our home galaxy on advanced worlds" said Woolsey, since arriving in Pegasus it was known that the people will have a natural hatred towards them as they never had to deal with the Wraith and the mentioning of Earth and populations across the Milky way galaxy were always kept to a minimum when speaking with Pegasus humans. However at this moment Woolsey figured nothing but the truth would not only help Mara and her proposal but also Atlantis's standing in the Coalition

"And how does it work on Earth?" asked Dimas and so began half an hour of questioning which befuddled many of the people in the hall. As for explaining the European Union with its common currency across many countries Woolsey had to explain the World Wars which were a foreign concept to the Humans of this galaxy, going to war and fighting against your fellow man at a governmental level was seen as petty as all were needed to survive against the Wraith. Then to the governmental banks which founded America and allowed them to win the two World Wars and put a man on the moon, by the end there were still many questions about the history of Earth but Woolsey was able to put such a line of questioning to an end and promised to hand out the textbooks they've given to Mara to all interested parties.

Now it was up to Woolsey to speak "As I am sure there are some of you who either believe or have been told to believe that we from Atlantis have abandoned this galaxy, and I am sure some of you don't believe what we have told this Coalition for why we were unable to return and I am here to help provide answers and provide hope to the people of this galaxy" pausing for a moment, Woolsey continued "Let me say this for the record, Atlantis did have to return to Earth to defend it against an advanced Wraith Hive ship that our ships couldn't destroy, Atlantis did have to remain on Earth to defend it till proper defenses were repaired and put in place, and Atlantis will remain in the Pegasus now and for the foreseeable future. And today I tell you that we from Atlantis are more committed than ever to bringing the Wraiths hold on the galaxy to an end, this includes two of our space worthy battleships each able to take on multiple Wraith cruisers and win being permanently stationed within this Galaxy" Woolsey said battleships even though it is battlecruisers as the people of the Coalition of Planets had no idea what a cruiser was in terms of naval power so saying battleship made it easier for them to understand " I repeat we will bring an end to the Wraiths hold on the galaxy and to that end" said Woolsey gesturing to the other two people in the hall from Atlantis, the hooded man and Sheppard walked to the front of the hall and in front of everyone "May I introduce Todd, a Wraith" and the hood came down.

* * *

 **I like this chapter, I've tried to put the state of Pegasus out on the table so tell me what you think.**


	5. Chapter 5

**Siberia Shipyard, Earth**

 **May, 2010**

It was the second week of May and Jack was standing around outside in Siberia, not the best place one would want to be even if it is the end of winter, it still is Siberia. Surrounding him in this errand of fools was the IOA representatives along with a few other dignitaries. They were really surrounded by walls and only in front of them open to the elements, but given that the building was a hangar didn't do anything to stop the cold. In front of them was officially the back of this Siberian base, unofficially it was the second shipyard on the planet Earth with two berths the Siberian shipyard has been constructing the HMS Victory and KFS Kursk this last year. With most of the trinium going to the build up of the Beta site bringing it up to the largest offworld base that Earth had the two ships took quite a long time to construct, now that the ships are done the Siberian shipyards will be kept quiet for awhile and only be the house to the smallest of maintenance crew for the ships of Earth's fleet. The rest of the construction crew will be moved to the Beta site to train other shipbuilders and a small amount of them will be heading to one of Bra'tacs worlds to train the Jaffa on how to make more advanced shipyards and then the Ha'taks themselves.

The trinium, naquadah, and neutronium for these two ships and soon for the rest of the Earth's fleet comes from multiple sources, the few planet that are inhabited provide nearly half of the resources. These planets include Edora, P3X 403 the planet with Unas, and Langara where all of Earths naquadriah comes from. Most trinium and neutronium come from five different mining worlds set up over the last couple of years and as the most mineral rich world for trinium the Beta site stands at the top of the five planets, really four planets and one moon. For the planet Edora the two billion people spread across its surface were connected through the help of SGC diplomats and they formed a planet wide government and they got a pretty good deal. With a few good negotiators from Edora and the weight Jack threw around they are currently in the middle of industrialization that when completed in a few years time it will put them at the same technology level of the 1950s and with the ability to push past using oil and straight into naquadah generators the planet is setting up to be a wonderful place to live. The clean generators power their cities as well as highly efficient batteries that are put into their cars making them a great testbed for the naquadah batteried cars.

"It's quite the thing eh General" said Mr. Chapman walking up to Jack, the man had quite a few glasses of champagne O'Neill could tell and this was before the actual unveiling of the vessels.

"Indeed. Two more ships brings the total to seven, were just getting stronger and our enemies weaker" said Jack and his observations were right, the Wraith civil war has destroyed a majority of their ships added onto the fact that they can't get to Earth in any meaningful timetable, the Lucian Alliance is a constant mess of shifting leaders and internal strife and from what Jack hears is getting even worse now that the three ship task force managed to wipe out Kefflins stronghold, making the most powerful man seem weak and now he is forced to consolidate or face encroachment from the other seconds. As for the oldest galactic enemies of Earth, the Goa'uld are nowhere to be found, the last minor Goa'uld the Tok'ra managed to find and execute went by the name Ares and Jack had quite the laugh from hearing what the Tok'ra were up against. Ares barricaded himself on some random world with the entirety of his fleet, the mighty fleet of the war god Ares was five Ha'taks strong and a few Al'kesh, needless to say it was a slaughter due to the Tok'ra fleet which numbered twenty upgraded Ha'taks and over fifty Al'kesh.

Apparently they were able to raid a 'Tomb World' of Anubis. The strange stronghold was completely empty, no living thing on the planet, and only known to a few Jaffa and Goa'uld in the employ of Anubis when he was still alive. A smart decision by the half-ascended Goa'uld, the Tomb Worlds were where he stored fleets of his ships giving him the ability to call forth hundreds of ships when it looked like he only had a few. The Tok'ra still believe Anubis had one or two more such worlds but the location of them died with him and most of his trusted subordinates aboard his flagship around Earth.

At this moment Mr. Strom had walked to the stage, the balding man always had the upper hand on most political items than the other IOA representatives and quite a few actual politicians that know of the stargate. So he had the honour of talking first, in his impeccable suit that apparently blocked out the cold, Jack had no idea what it was made out of but he wanted it, Mr. Strom began "Ladies and Gentlemen I stand here with the honour of introducing the newest vessels in Earth's mighty fleet, through technologies recently given to us at a mighty cost" Jack knew the words were just that, words. Mr. Strom had never actually meet an Asgard as he was a Senator unknowing of the stargate when the Asgard committed race suicide.

"And through these technologies our two newest ships will be the most advanced in the fleet and the new norm for our battlecruisers." These words however were correct, The HMS Victory and HMS Kursk were what the engineers were designating BC - 304 C and BC - 304 D respectively. The designations are for the change in the classes superstructure, as for the A class it represents the Daedalus, Odyssey before the Asgard refit, Sun Tzu, and Korolev they are the first design of the BC - 304 class, for the B class there is only one ship designated as such and it is the Apollo because of its Horizon Weapons Platform and was recently modified to carry more of the Horizon class missiles, these massive Multiple Independently Target-able Re-entry Vehicles (MIRV) are designed for one thing and that is the total destruction of a planetary based civilization, there are other missiles meant for strategic targeting but at the moment those are still in the design stage. As for the C class the HMS Victory is the first ship to be designated as such, the internal space saved from not installing a Horizon Weapons Platform gives the Victory the ability to store a large number of Mark Ⅷ naquadah nukes for beaming, the Asgard were never really happy with the Tau'ri to use their technology as such but the tactical value is simple to great.

As for the first D class that honour goes to the Russian Kursk, the vessel has the storage capacity for five Horizon MIRV missiles that are now consisting of fifteen Mark Ⅹ missiles and five decoys and can wipe out large swaths of a planet's surface. Lastly rounding out the new generation of Daedalus classes is an extra twenty railgun turrets that can fire their projectiles at double the speed without sacrificing anything else but the power requirements, but that's expected. Along with a new hyperdrive that's 50% faster which is powered by Asgard Neutrino Ion generators which use hydrogen and neutronium to produce massive amounts of power

"So it is my honour to show off the HMS Victory and RFS Kursk" said Strom turning around and joining the rest of the dignitaries in clapping, at the same time two bays opened up in the ground and the two ships lifted off, they were impossible to tell from each other asides from the names on the side of the flight pods, one in English and the other in Russian. The party went on for another hour with the two ships still floating above the docks where they were built. Eventually Jack was able to get a beam out and returned to the Pentagon where he had a Security council meeting, unfortunately, and after that he had a peculiar meeting with Colonel Young.

* * *

 **Earth Orbit, USS General George Hammond**

 **Same time...**

William was in his quarters, with it being a spaceship and all he wasn't actually given his own quarters he shared it with two other officers, the second weapons officer a Lieutenant Masters and a medic Lieutenant Heins. William likes the two men but with him being only a Second Lieutenant he was forced to do quite a bit because 'seniority'. At the moment the Hammond is in orbit of Earth and William was getting time off, but first he had to report to Area 51 for some reason or another, but he was fine with it as Mark was apparently transferred to Area 51 to act as an assistant researcher for a weapons developer. He was at this moment calling up his parents and friends, since he never had a proper conversation with them about him technically dropping out of University so he had to come up with a reason why it was a good idea.

After that was done he reported to the transportation room, said room was where the Goa'uld transportation rings are kept and other than a raid on an Alliance shipyard a year ago the rings have been kept quite ever since, not really needed when you have Aagard beaming. William entered the room and found three 302 pilots waiting for him. Ever since the amazing success with the attack on the stronghold and station William had earned the respect of most of the 302 pilots on the Hammond and a few from the Odyssey, among the pilots was Crater.

"Gonna miss you buddy" said Crater walking up to William and patting him on the back.

"Ehh, not gone for long only a month. Just try not to blow her up while I'm gone. Would like to have a bed next time I come back" replied William smiling at Crater who was being teased for the past week. Mirroring what happened to him in training he was launching in his 302 and the moment he cleared the Hammonds flight pod a Mark Ⅵ disengaged from the fighter and actually activated, launching itself a kilometer in front of the Hammond before exploding. Not damaging anything but the incident had to be covered up as it is hard to hide a nuclear explosion in high orbit of Earth. This time however it was the fault of the programing, the 302 hadn't wiped the previous update from its memories and was running two different operating software at the same time and looking through the other 302's it was discovered about one in thirty of all the fighters had the glitch. With a day of straight coding from the guys at Area 51 an update was pushed to 302s stationed on the Daedalus ships and Earth bases around the world, there were massive complaints from all parties.

"Eh no promises" replied Crater, at this moment the other two walked up.

"So what you doing down there Cole?" asked Lucy, the man was given the name due to an embarrassing thing happening for him in training, William never figured out what exactly.

"Standard SG training apparently, will be taking a week off beforehand but still need the training though" replied William.

"Oh man I remember when they put us through that. A tip Cole, watch out for Zat week" said the last 302 pilot, Craters co-pilot.

"Oh man I remember Zat week, your gonna have some great stories from that. Make sure to tell me them all when you get back" said Crater to Williams curious gaze.

"Alright, but it'll probably be quite tame if it is what I think it is" replied William

"Oh it isn't" smiled Lucy. Since their conversation began the room was slowly filling up with people and at that moment a voice came over the loudspeaker.

"All non-transferring personnel, please leave the transporter room" the voice of Marks was authoritative and friendly which was a strange combination that he shared with Colonel Carter and from what William hears General O'Neill as well.

With a few goodbyes William soon found himself in Area 51. He was laughing on the inside as when he was younger he was so sure that this place housed aliens and alien technology, oh how so close he was to the truth. The people quickly dispersed, each one knowing where they were going and when they dispersed William was left alone in the room with one of his friends.

"Long time no see eh" said Mark

"Campbell" smiled William, he had gotten use to calling people by their last names and it was something that he needed to keep up on. "What happened, did you annoy them so much they kicked you off the Tria?"

"Eh, you blow up a few technologies and suddenly you're the enemy" replied Mark with a shrug

"Seriously?"

"God no. Since your discovery McKay was able to give us Admiral level access to the Tria and next thing I know no-one is allowed near the ship, let alone its Drone factory" replied Mark, who gestured to a door and William followed him out it

"So they figure out how to get the neutronium yet?" asked William as he followed Mark down the hall.

"Nah, something about it being locked behind doors we didn't even know existed on Atlantis"

"Oh, how did we figure that out?"

"Well since your discovery about the hidden section on the Tria it gave people ideas and over the past month people were going over the Atlantis database looking for clues and eventually they found it, only members of the Ancient Council and other high ranking Ancients have access to it though, but we're certain it has their most advanced tech in it"

"Sweet we break the encryption yet?"

"Nope, the work around McKay used was a virus and was immediately wiped out by the Atlantis firewalls, bloody thing lasted less than half a second. That's what you get for using modified Wraith code"

"Hu… So what you up to now?"

"Working with a Dr. Felger... Dude I think the guy is gonna kill us all one day" replied Mark shaking his head

"How bad?" smiled William he didn't know the history of Dr. Felger as he was still going over all the files he has access to but Mark knows.

"Dude shut down the entire gate network for days" replied Mark "the entire network and they are allowing him access to the APBs to test, dude has come up with over a hundred different variations that have either blown up or haven't worked"

"Man this guy sounds great" replied William smiling at Marks situation in life

"The guy has been connecting as many dangerous things into an APB as best he can since I started with him. He drained a Mark Ⅸ of all its radioactive properties somehow, absolutely no radiation from the naquadriah and still the same ten gigatons of destruction and now we're looking into it on how to use them as the standard nuke we use on ships" The problem in producing Mark Ⅸ and Ⅹ gatebusters was not only the naquadriah but the radioactive properties it had. Shields are required to work with the things for any length of time and the casings on the Mark Ⅸ and Ⅹ only allow a shelf life of a year before the casing needs to be replaced.

"So what he just stumbled into it?" asked William

"Dude was looking into how to make a permanent EMP field and a Mark Ⅸ was in the next lab over, the field stopped all radioactive decay when he turned it on. Thing cleans up radioactivity better than anything the Asgard have come up with. The Asgard man…" At that moment they came to a windowed hallway and William found himself looking down onto the Sun Tzu. It has been docked at this berth for more time than it has been in space, ever since it was able to limp back after it engaged the Super Hive it was stuck in dock for six months and now it was stuck again for another six as the top brass had figured it was a good a time as any to swap out the hyperdrive, railguns, and power generator. It was already becoming a joke that the Sun Tzu was bad luck.

"Well at least she came back in better shape than when it attacked the super hive" said Mark looking down at the vessel bearing the name of the most read man in militaries across the world.

"Didn't actually see that report how bad was it?"

"Lost the bottom half of its port flightpod and most of the hull was stripped off the starboard side of the neck"

"Jesus… well I'm just happy we didn't lose anyone"

"Ya I heard you had a major part in coming up with that plan" said Mark turning to William

"I came up with all of it… was terrified that someone was gonna die because I was an idiot in thinking a Second Lieutenant can come up with strategies with tech he only found out existed a few months earlier" replied William bringing the conversation to a more solemn place

"Dude I've been talking with the 302 pilots on base, them along with nearly every officer I've talked to have really wished they were a part of it" said Mark

"Ya well it has earned me more credibility with the people on the Hammond" said William smiling

"I'm sure as hell it did. Hey you got nothing for the next few hours right?"

"Yup headed back home for a few days before back here for SG training"

"Alright come on, we are testing the newest of Felger's ideas for the APB and if I'm dying I'm taking you with me" said Mark grabbing Williams shoulder and taking him deeper into the base. Area 51 was actually made up of over a dozen different levels moving deeper and deeper into the Earth, on the surface there was only the 302 airbase that housed the majority of the space worthy interceptors on the North American continent.

Across Earth every top-secret base belonging to IOA countries are filled with 302's and with all but the most advanced technologies shared equally among the nations many of them are working on many items to help defend Earth or just make a little bit easier, from a VTOL shuttle to massive bomber/transport that is based on the globemaster. Unfortunately the countries working on these prototypes only have access to a minimal amount of non-terrestrial elements including naquadah, trinium, and neutronium meaning that they are working on ways to make the space worthy craft with only elements found on Earth. This was an agreed upon measure by the IOA as shuttles and the globemaster transports are probably going to be the standard of civilian ships whenever the IOA decides to tell the world about the stargate. This also includes cars, civilian electronics, a Mach 0.8 train that puts everything the Japanese built to shame, and lastly coming from the Russians and Chinese were tanks that are meant to be able to fit through the Stargate.

Eventually William and Mark made it to the lab and William got to meet Dr. Felger for the first time. The man didn't strike him as all that different from the other scientists William had met but that changed the moment he opened his mouth.

"Ah Lieutenant Campbell I need you to clean up the lettuce on the X-134" he said

"Yes doctor…" replied Mark who walked up to a meter long device that looked like a small cannon it was attached to a cart and Mark began picking off lettuce from it "You need to stop eating in the lab, the thing may mess with the weapon"

"Nonsense the X-134 is military grade, meant to last through storms thick and thin" replied Felger not bothering to look at William and solely focusing on his tablet.

"I don't think that's the saying" said William

"Close enough… Wait. Who are you?" asked Felger now noticing William

"Friend of Campbell, Second Lieutenant Cole. Nice to meet you doctor, I've heard great things" smiled William who stretched out his hand waiting for Felger to shake it but instead he looked at him and his hand with suspicion

"Who set you up? Was it Coombs?" he asked

"No clue what you mean, I find it amazing that you were able to shut down the entire gate network" respond William

"It wasn't my fault. Ba'al modified my virus and spread it" defended Felger

"Well either way it was a brilliant idea" responded William, and hearing that Felger got up from his chair and shook Williams hand

"I like you already Cole" he said smiling

"Well Doctor what do you got here?"

"Ah my newest invention, the X -134, after the failures of X -133 I think I was able to stabilize the liquid naquadah" responded Felger and at the mention of naquadah being a liquid Cole took a few steps back from the device. He may be new but he knows that naquadah wasn't meant to be liquid and with the most fickle of elements being in a state it wasn't supposed to be he tried his best to stay away from it.

Felger unnoticing of William stepping back from his possible deathtrap walked and began pushing the cart out of the lab. "Alright we are going to test it out at the range"

William figured that Felger must have had a reputation for the things that he had done in his years with the SGC but now that he followed him down the hall, to what he assumed was the range he got a good glimpse at what that reputations effect had on the others. Everyone who saw Felger moving a weapon looking device in the general direction of the range began moving in the exact opposite direction, some actually running trying to get as far away from Felger and his weapon as possible. William looked to Mark who gave him a look that said 'yup'

"So Doctor what exactly is the X-134?" asked William

"Ah a modified Asgard Plasma Beam of my own make, using the Asgard Plasma Beam as a base design I believe I have come up with a weapon that can cut down the full recharge cycle of the Beam from fifteen seconds down to five" said Felger

"Ah that would be a great upgrade, tell me how did you figure that out?" asked William, he knew the limitations of the APB was its capacitor charging and the heat that came off the weapon, if they can decrease one of them it would be a good idea either way.

"Well you see the Asgard Plasma Beam isn't wholly plasma..." started Felger and William was almost immediately lost when the words _phase-shifting subspace_ came from Felger. Since joining up with Homeworld Command William felt that the underlying principles on the advanced technologies were fairly basic things that, as a person who had a few physics classes at the University level, he could at least understand slightly if some were a bit over him but currently Felger was just talking circles around William. Eventually Felger finished explaining how the APB worked and how he upgraded the APB which amounted to 'liquid naquadah'.

"Well that is certainly an amazing advancement" added William still unsure of half the things Felger said.

"Thank you Cole, now all we need to do is set this up and plug it in" said Felger who opened a door to a vast cavern that William figured was the largest shooting range he has ever seen. "Mark can you set up the target and I'll set up the X-134"

Following Mark into the room at the back of the cavern William watched him do his work

"So will this work?" William said

"Nope the liquid naquadah has a higher chance of blowing up instead of doing its job that Felger is hoping it would. A metal is solid for a reason anything deviating from that is highly unstable" responded Mark

"Oh… Wait can you understand what he said?"

"I've been here a couple of weeks with the entire time of him working on the APBs I kind of got it all down, but still the phase-shifting stuff is hard to wrap my head around" answered Mark who pressed a button and a hundred meters down range a large plate of a white material was lowered from the ceiling

"What are you using as a target?" asked William looking to the metal

"The most advanced alloy we know, the Asgard came up with it a few years ago. They never really have given it a name so we've been calling it Asgardian Metal"

"They were never called Asgardians, thats from Marvel…" said William looking to Mark

"Everyone here is a nerd, you should see the power armour they're working on"

"Power armour?" perked William

"Alright done, please raise the shield Campbell" said Felger and with a press of a button William saw a shield cover the different walls and the glass in front of them.

"So what do you expect to happen?" asked William

"It'll blow up…" said Mark

"Nonsense, I expect that through the twenty seconds the beam will fire four times and the liquid naquadah will have an increase in temperature by 20 Kelvin" responded Felger

"And what about the target?"

"Asgard Plasma Beams are great at penetrating armour, the prototype X-134 should either have punched a complete hole through it or very close" responded Felger.

"Power flow is prepared Doctor" said Mark

"Alright then charge and fire when ready" said Felger and five seconds later the machine blew up blinding them from what was going on inside the range as the black smoke covered the glass in front of them.

Mark responded calling out what the readings were telling him "Weapon failed, fire suppression is active and ventilation is working at full power, Shields down to 60%"

"Well that was one big explosion" said William

"Told you it would blow"

"Don't be so negative Campbell it was most likely the energy containment fields, I figured they can hold up unreinforced but I guessed wrong. A few modifications and it will work" responded Felger

"The problem is the liquid naquadah, far to unstable" responded Mark

"Nonsense I fix the instability" said Felger, as they were going back and forth William was looking at the range as the block smoke cleared, the weapon was in pieces, but the target.

"Guys what happened to the target?" asked William

Looking up from the console in front of them the two bickering men looked down the hall and where there should be a white pristine plate, there was a black charred plate that had cracks spreading outward from the center of the plate that was crumbled in as if a giant had punched it.

"Hu…"

* * *

 **Area 51, Earth**

 **A week later…**

"A piece of lettuce?" asked Mitchell, he was currently in the officers mess with Captain Hailey and Vala was somewhere annoying other officers but Mitchell didn't care at the moment.

"Yup" respond Hailey

"How?" asked Mitchell

"He ripped out so much that all that was left was the containment field and he modified it so much that the piece of lettuce that got into the barrel survived the acceleration and initial impact onto the plate" responded Hailey

"But how did a piece of lettuce do that much damage?"

"The weapon is meant to spread the energy out over the long stream of plasma so it doesn't spread out what plasma normally does, instead it created a cocoon around the piece of lettuce and then shot it at mach fifty, quite an amazing accident actually"

"So we gonna start shooting lettuce at our enemies now?" asked Mitchell

"Maybe, the weapon does have potential" said Hailey

"How?"

"Our new railguns fire at mach ten, any higher and the barrel will be warped by the magnetic forces used to fire the round and we'd have to make the barrels longer. This weapon could be scaled up and using half the energy of a standard APB it could be firing shells at significant fractions of the speed of light"

"And by significant, you mean…"

"One to five percent" responded Hailey

"That's nothing, the new Daedalus classes can move at what thirty percent the speed of light? said Mitchell

"It is when our normal engagement range is five hundred kilometers, at one percent of the speed of light it could cross that range in a tenth of a second"

"Oh…"

"Yup replacing our weapons with these our range just multiplied by a factor of thirty, meaning our railguns are now resigned to focus solely on anti-fighter support" said Hailey

"That's what they were designed for right?"

"Railguns were meant to be the main weapon against both ship-to-ship and anti-fighter. It was the best that they could come up with without going into energy weapons that we still haven't fully figuring out. The failure of a single modification to the APB's for three years is a testament to that…" said a young man to the two's left. The mess was pretty empty and every table had at least one person eating alone, such a thing was a common sight with a base full of nerds.

"And you are?" asked Mitchell

"Second Lieutenant Cole…" responded William he was eating his meal without even looking at it and focused on the tablet in front of him

"Carters new protégé?" asked Mitchell

"I'm not her protég…" said William looking to the man, who he now realize is Colonel Mitchell of SG -1. He quickly dropped everything, stood up, and offered him a crisp salute. "Sorry sir, I wasn't aware you were on base"

"Not a problem sonny, why don't you bring your food and eat with us" said Mitchell and unwilling to deny the man who put an end to the Ori crusade William obliged.

"Sorry again sir I wasn't paying attention to who I was listening to…" said William

"Not a problem Second LT. So you are Carter's new protégé and the man who came up with the plan to pull our asses out of the fire a few weeks ago right?" said Mitchell sizing up William

"I wouldn't call it that sir, I am just someone who wrote an interesting paper, and I did come up with the operation to rescue you from the Lucian stronghold" responded William omitting the second part of the plan in attacking the station, knowing that he didn't focus solely on planning their rescue might not go over well with Mitchell.

"Well thanks for that, good plan by the way. As for your paper Carter was immediately interested in you when I showed her the papers" said Mitchell

"You read them sir?"

"Oh ya. I was the first to find them. Amazing things, right Hailey" said Mitchell to who now William looked to the newest member of SG -1 sitting to his right and from what William remembered was Carter's actual protégé. Hailey was examining the man and had a quizzical look on her.

"It was strangely quite useful for our technologies" said Hailey

"Thank you ma'am" replied William

"So what you looking at LT?" asked Mitchell gesturing to tablet that William was so enthralled with moments earlier

"The specifics of the Asgard beaming technology…" said William looking to the designs and equations

"You can understand that?" asked Hailey

"Some of it, only took a couple of physics courses when I was at University so a lot of it is over my head" replied William

"Well no point in being down, I don't know how half the stuff I use works" replied Mitchell

"Ya well I've been told that there was nothing anyone could do and I just wanted to check it out myself. But it's a fool's errand" said William

"What was something that no-one can do?"

"You heard what happened to the Hammond?" asked William

"Ya, went to an Icarus type planet that the Lucians were using to attack the Destiny. Lost two birds I believe" said Mitchell "A friend?"

"Yup man named Crater, southern hospitality given human form, good guy" said William

"Well it's best that you don't forget, won't be the last guy you lose in our working environment. I lost my first guy in the middle east, watched him go standing by his side at the hospital bed. Doesn't get better, probably best it doesn't" said Mitchell reminiscing

"Lost a friend in the attack on P2S - 569. Couldn't have done anything with the Lucian Alliance bombarding the place from orbit. Him and another thirty-six others" said Hailey

"Well looks like I ruined to mood…" weakly smiling William added

"Its alright LT. So what are you doing at Area 51, shouldn't you be on the Hammond" changing the subject was Mitchell

"SG training, never had it. Was immediately assigned to the Hammond and was onboard for the last few months" said William

"Well I feel bad for you" responded Hailey smiling

"Why?"

"Cause I'm running SG training for the next few months Daniel is in Washington trying to get permission for us to take a ship to the Ida galaxy and three people don't make an SG team" said Mitchell "And I'm gonna run you into the ground"

"Well… It seems that that was a challenge sir" responded William

"Oh yes it was"

"Yo! Cole!" came Marks voice from across the hall

"Who's that?" asked Hailey

"A friend, working here under Felger"

"So he is the legendary Campbell, no one has been able to work with Felger for more than a weeks before putting in for reassignment. I hear he has been able to keep going for a two weeks" said Hailey, she was assigned to the SGC for a few years after training and knew all about Felger

"You know... he probably doesn't know he can ask to be reassigned…" said William, knowing Mark he probably figured it was up to the brass to put him wherever they can find a place for him to stay

"Then should we tell him?" asked Mitchell as Mark was walking their way with his tray full of food.

"Absolutely not" smiled William

Mark got to them and sat down, in the mess it was an unspoken rule that no-one had to salute a superior officer, at least at Area 51 and all the ships. William only saluted because he was distracted at the time. "Hey Cole, Colonel, Captain" Mark said nodding to the members of SG -1

"Second LT Campbell, you working with Felger right?" asked Mitchell

"Yup, and my life is in danger everyday doing it" said Mark digging into his jello

"Well this is what? The second thing Felger was able to come up with something in the past few months" said Hailey

"Yup, the guy is really lucky on stumbling into things" said Mark "you know he has ordered like three new miniaturized APB's. He is dead set on figuring out his system, doesn't even want to work on his new energy cannon"

"Energy cannon?" asked Mitchell

"The lettuce cannon, he told me to hand it off to Dr. Leed to be reassigned to someone willing to put time into it" said Mark

"So who got it?" asked Hailey

"Ah I'm keeping it, gotta have something to do between cleaning up after Felger and watching his projects blow up" said Mark who finished his jello.

"So you aren't going to hand it off to someone who can properly look into it?" asked Hailey

"Have you seen the thing? The whole gun needs to be scaled to well over ten meters long for it to not blow up after one shot. Then to get to a percent of the speed of light it's gotta have a twenty meter long barrel, minimum" responded Mark

"So what? If you ask O'Neill he will put so much people behind you to get the massive space guns" said Mitchell

"We don't have the manufacturing capabilities for this thing to be viable" said William

"Wait, now I'm lost..." said Hailey

"These are battleship sized cannons. Sure we can get one and strap it to a Daedalus but that energy is better used for the APBs. The Iowa-class had nine 16-inch naval guns on three turrets, we will need at least that and specialized shells for this thing to be useful at the ranges its made for" explained Mark

"So what we need eighteen of these cannons firing constantly?" asked Mitchell

"More like twelve and putting twelve of these on a Daedalus will be hard" said Mark

"So what? We can still have one the things range should help a lot in making it viable" added Hailey

"Yes but we get back to the manufacturing again, the Iowa had over a hundred shells per barrel, that is more than all the missiles stored aboard the Daedalus, and for what? A single gun that says 'stay away' when fired" said Mark

"You thought about this a lot haven't you" said William it was a statement not a question

"Ya. Until we get the factories retooled for the shells and the firing rate up, let alone figuring out a design that doesn't blow up when fired once it's shelved" said Mark

"Well I would still like to know how its going, are you allowed access to the SGC database here?" asked Hailey taking out her tablet and going into the network that has been set up between the SGC and Area 51. The two places had a constant sharing network so that multiple people at both bases could work on the same thing, or at least be updated about it.

"Yup got access last week" said Mark pulling out his tablet

"Great give me access to the file" said Hailey

"Alright you got it"

"..." silence came from Hailey "You named this the Lettuce Cannon"

"Hey its my project I get to name it whatever I want"

* * *

 **Area 51, Earth**

 **June, 2010**

 **A week later...**

William walked, or more accurately limped, into Felgers lab and collapsed into a chair. "Having fun with Zat week?" asked Mark looking to his friend from behind his computer

"My legs are still asleep, I swear Mitchell ordered Vala and Hailey to focus on me only" replied William.

SG training was usually held in a military base in Colorado, near the SGC. But a few years ago a breakthrough was discovered and they could now make and program Tok'ra tunneling crystals. So with a layer of granite below the usual Area 51 the crystals were used to make a massive underground training complex that was both stable thanks to the granite and construction alloys used when repairing Atlantis the year is was still on Earth, the complex had both forests and mockups of different Goa'uld ships. The past week was filled with training on said mockups eight hours a day, as for the other sixteen they were being constantly attacked with zats to 'build up an immunity' and to make sure 'they're always prepared' while it did help it was still annoying eating one moment and then waking up an hour later with your face in your food. The zats that the trainers were using were modified to only stun as when they attack the trainees everyone either bulrushes the trainers, no one had been able to get close, or scatters and in the mess people are likely to get shot multiple times.

"And that is why I am on the R&D track" said Mark

"Please, eventually even you will have to go through this" responded William

"Not as long as I am helping Felger and he is far away from figuring out his system"

"Did he lose another one?"

"Yup second one this week, just put in another request for three more miniaturized APBs"

"Did he at least give up with the liquid naquadah?"

"Yup on to a naquadah/neutronium alloy now"

"Yesh. How's your Lettuce Cannon?" asked William

"Figured out the standard dimensions now, with a twenty-five meter long barrel it can shoot at two percent the speed of light"

"Thats a long barrel"

"Yup and what sucks is its so ingrained in the tech it can't be lowered"

"So you figure how to strap it to a Daedalus?"

"Nah right now I'm working on our project" said Mark which piqued Williams interest

"You figure out the range?"

"Yup, seventy thousand kilometers" responded Mark

"So we can work with it" said William

"Yup" What the two were talking about was a hitch in the Asgard beaming technology William had discovered. He wasn't able to forget that the only reason Crater was lost was because the Hammond didn't have the range or time to beam their fighter pilots out so William looked into the technology. The Asgard beaming technology does something relatively simple, converts matter into information and then back into matter again at a different location. It does this through a set of sensors strapped to the hull that identify and converts the item that's being beamed. What William and Mark figured out is that with a constant output of tachyons the sensors can pick out its beaming target from over twice the distance away as normal. Now usually tachyons shouldn't exist in three-dimensions but that never stopped the Asgard and Mark was able to find a small device that took tachyons and brought them to three-dimensional space and held them there for hours. Now that they found the strange device William and Mark designed a flight suit for 302 pilots that is lined with the material that holds the tachyons allowing a person to be beamed from twice the max distance and through a fair amount of interference, not the same amount as the blockers the Alliance is using but it can pierce through radiation and EMPs from high powered nukes.

"So can we get the thing and test it out?" asked William

"Nope, we deal with machines here, gonna need to head over to the power armour guys to use their manufacturing center to make the suit"

"Damn, can you ask I gotta pack we are apparently headed out to some planet for in the field training and testing out the Cougar" said William the Cougar was the first breakthrough that the people around the world have figured out in how to project the military power of Earth through the stargate. The Cougar is a military jeep designed to fit through that gate and can mount fifty cal. Using naquadah batteries it can sustain 100 mph for days at a time and be powered for months at normal operating procedures before requiring a recharge.

"You excited?" asked Mark

"Why?"

"Your stepping foot on another planet"

"I guess so… I never actually stepped foot on another planet"

"It was a strange experience for me at the Alpha site, knowing that besides a few square kilometers the entire planet was empty of Human life" said Mark

"Well I gotta get my things ready, I'll see ya in a week" said William

"Alright enjoy the Zats!" said Mark as William left the room.

* * *

 **P4Y - 7Y8**

 **Next day**

William was in a squad with four other trainees escorting a scientist. The planet they were on was apparently an Ancient world many millennia ago, they recently found its address from the Atlantis database. With the world that once housed millions of Ancients it was checked out a few months ago by SG - 1 and now there was a small contingent of scientists looking through the rubble, a few computer crystals were found that actually pre-dated Atlantis and now William with five other people were headed to look for an underground lab that should be in this general direction.

"So you figure out who was the closest?" asked Jen Karla, a fellow Canadian

"That would be Jacks, three meters" said a Brit, Miles Heans

"Damn, I thought we would've gotten closer" said the only American, Kate Olins

"Ya right. The only real option was to run" said William they were talking about the effects of Zat week, out of everyone who decided to try and disarm the trainers it appears only Jacks got the closest.

"Ah you Canadians and your running away. The true men would attack" came the only Russian, Alexander Alexi

"Ah we Canadians and our reasonable deductive abilities, knowing when a battle is lost" replied Jen looking to the Russian who was twice her size.

"Alrighty boys and girls looks like were here" said Miles as the Brit he was kind of assumed to be incharge of the team even though there technically wasn't anyone incharge, William figured it was due to his accent it just screamed command, or that it reminded him of his Dad. In front of them was a small collection of stone walls and pillars, which was what they were looking for. The Ancients built most of their tech in a sturdy stone like substance, it was a measure against the ravages of time and it had proven its worth. All other Ancient technology in the Milky way that wasn't built into stone degraded to dust since a million years is a long time for anything, including the stone. While the outposts which had the same design style as Atlantis survived mostly due to shields and some due to them being hidden underground, all others degraded to dust. At this moment the scientist walked up.

"Found the platform" said Dr. Kavanagh, the pony-tailed man was part of the first expedition to Atlantis and has never been allowed back to the city after he left.

"So Doc, you figure out where this lab is and what it does?" asked Alexander

"Biological research" said William reading the walls around the platform that held the stone altar that looked exactly like the one on Dakara

"You can read Ancient?" asked Jen surprised at her countryman

"Yup was on Atlantis a couple of weeks, knowing Latin helps a lot" responded William

"Hell I can read Latin, but never could figure out the language" said Miles

"Well I used the learning tool used to teach children, so…" this caused smiles to come from everyone else on his team "Oh go fuck yourselves"

"Got it" said Kavanagh after pressing a few of the plates down on the altar a staircase leading down opened up almost swallowing Kate.

"So we going down?" asked Alexander

"Protocol for anything biological research is to call in the experts. This is Ancient so we gotta wait for McKay…" said William

"Pfft please we don't need to wait for McKay we've got me" said Kavanagh

"Weren't you on Atlantis for only a year before you were kicked out?" asked Miles which caused smiles to form on the trainees.

"I left that run away train, and look I've survived while they've had to deal with the city almost being destroyed countless times" defended Kavanagh as he walked down into the tunnel

"Alright Will, Alexander, and Kate stay up here and report this" said Miles as he and Jen followed the scientist.

"So you gonna report or no?" asked Alexander looking to William

"Fine" turning on his radio "Team-4 to Papa Bear" for some reason Mitchell had decided to call himself Papa Bear and now everyone was suppose to call him that, this was probably the reason Alexander didn't want to call it in.

"Papa Bear here, Team-4 go ahead" came Mitchells voice

"We found the entrance to the lab and the writing says its for biological research, Kavanagh along with Miles and Jen are inside looking around" reported William

"Team-4 you know protocol, get them out of there before they kill us all" replied Mitchell not in an affirmative tone but more like a father disappointed in its child

"Copy Papa Bear" William tucked his radio back into his vest and looked to Alexander "You gonna report or no?"

Alexander gave him a smile and shouted down the stairs "Miles! We are to wait for experts!"

No response came back

"Great, I'll go get em" said William walking down the stairs.

It was quite a staircase but when William got down there he could see the lab and it was rather large, where he came down there was a path straight forward at the front of the lab. To the left was the majority of the lab and to the right was a small indent in the wall. Kavanagh, Miles, and Jen were at a terminal on the far side so William walked towards them and near the indent in the wall.

"Yo we are going to wait for experts" said William

"I am an expert, see I already downloaded the database and now am bringing the lab online" said Kavanagh and at the moment he pressed a button William was crossing in front of the indent, out from the top of said indent came green beams of light that grabbed William and dragged him into the indent.

"WHAT THE!" he shouted before he was slammed into the indent knocking him out

"Doc get him out of there!" shouted Miles seeing William knocked out and being held up by the green beams of light, Jen hesitantly walked towards William "Don't go near him!" Miles shouted "Doctor!"

"I am trying!" shouted Kavanagh quickly going to the main commands and pressing as many as he could find, maybe it was Kavanagh or maybe it was done but William collapsed and the green lights were gone.

Jen ran up to the collapsed William and began looking him over "He's alive" she said quickly looking over his body.

"Shit!" shouted Kavanagh as Miles got to Williams side.

"What Doc?"

"I pressed the self destruct button, why is the self destruct a main command?!" he shouted

"Can you stop it?" asked Miles

"No the permissions are still set for a million years ago!" responded Kavanagh

"How long do we got?"

"Six minutes"

"Alright get your shit and get ready to run" said Miles and he unstrapped his backpack, "Jen help me get him on my shoulders, take my medpack" and within a few seconds Miles had William across his shoulders and Jen had taken Miles medpack and abandoned everything from her backpack but her more extensive medpack "Time to get out of here" Miles said as he ran up the stairs followed by Jen and lastly was Kavanagh who abandoned his bag and held tightly to the tablet he downloaded the database to.

Alexander and Kate were talking about the NHL when the three came running up the stairs

" _My God!_ " cursed Alexander in his native Russian when he saw William knocked out "Is he alive?"

"Maybe if we run as fast as we can before the six minutes are up, so RUN!" shouted Miles not stopping for the two, who quickly followed him in the general direction of where they came from.

"Papa Bear this is Team-4 we have accidentally set the self destruct on the lab and have an injured, I think" said Jen over the radio

"Team-4 we got the Cougar headed for you, how big of a self destruct we talking about?" came Mitchells voice

"Kavanagh! How big was the self destruct!" shouted Jen to the scientist that was lagging behind the trained soldiers

"Will vaporize anything within a few hundred meters!" he shouted back

"Papa Bear we got a blast radius of a few hundred meters and we might just make it but expect six injured!" shouted Jen over the radio, she knew that they could run at least three hundred meters easy but that was the initial blast and the shockwave will go far beyond that.

"Kavanagh! How long?" shouted Alexander

"Two minutes!" he shouted back still lagging behind more and more as the five ran, with William on Miles' back he was at the back of the group with Kavanagh.

"Tree line!" shouted Jen at the front

"Spread out find something to hide behind!" responded Miles and the three infront did spread out as they hit the tree line.

"This is Papa Bear we are five minutes out!" came Mitchells voice over the radio

"Thirty seconds!" shouted Jen to everyone including Mitchell and in thirty seconds the lab blew. Jen was right they were not anywhere near the safe limit.

* * *

 **OOOOH cliffhanger! I was thinking of changing the release schedule, do you guys like two chapters released over the weekend or do you want them spread out over the week a bit more? Let me know!**


	6. Chapter 6

**M65 - 466, Pegasus Galaxy**

 **May, 2010**

"So uuuh now what?" asked Sheppard, all of SGA - 1 and Todd were in a puddle jumper over the planet waiting. Down below was apparently a Wraith outpost as old as the Ancient-Wraith war Todd uses it as one of his fall back positions and has proven itself useful. Earlier Todd found out he spent over a year in stasis, needless to say he was not happy and now that the mess with the Coalition of Planets was dealt with he can go back to dealing with his Wraith. As for his alliance it was most likely gone but Todd was adamant that his main Hive would've survived and will answer his call so now that he sent out the message they were waiting in orbit.

"We wait" responded Todd who closed his eyes and possibly began meditating. The rolled eyes of Ronon was all that the big man had given in response to Todd.

"So anyone wanna play blackjack?" asked Lieutenant Garry Willum the new science officer for SGA-1

"I'll take you on" said Ronon, he was technically paid a salary from Earth but given that it was a foreign currency for a planet three million lightyears away he didn't care for it. The only good thing about this was that he could join on the gambling that occured on Atlantis every month or so, the so called movie night had grown into a festival or sorts with gaming tables of all kind, movies going well into the night and a free flow of drinks and the ever popular popcorn.

"I am not letting you take any more of my hard earned cash" stated Sheppard he knew what to do for the genius' that inhabit Atlantis, stay far away. Whether it be blackjack, poker, or even war they somehow were able to beat the odds and win against him far more than the universe should allow, he still has no idea how they could win nine times out of ten at war of all things...

"I used all the money on toys for Torren and books for Kanaan" said Teyla since being on Earth with Kanaan and Torren for a year Teyla had been given a rather generous allowance and been spoiling her child with the many things from Earth and Kanaan had taken a liking to Earth literature.

"Alrighty big guy, you vs me" said the LT pulling out the pack from his vest and began setting up a small table in the back of the jumper.

It was over an hour later that the two had finally stopped, Ronon was cleaned out again by the LT and was not that happy about it, true all he did spend his money on was either swords or other medieval weapons that now littered his quarters on Atlantis but he was still not happy about losing. As for the LT he was all smiles as it was just as easy as ever.

"So tell me Colonel after this is done, what's the plan then?" asked Willum collapsing into the chair behind the jumper pilot

"Well we send Todd on his merry way and he enjoys his time in fighting to the top of the Wraith again" said Sheppard

"Such a thing is not as easy as you say" said Todd coming out of his meditation

"Oh why not? aren't you the genius tactician?" asked Sheppard

"I have made my Alliance due to my extensive history and knowledge. Now I will be taken as a mistake and un-pure due to this conversion" said Todd looking to his hand where the feeding organ should be, now it was just a palm.

"Well I'm sure you can figure it out, or not and die" stated Sheppard even now that Todd no longer fed on Humans he still couldn't shake his natural hatred toward the Wraith, maybe it was the fact that he fed on Humans for over ten thousand years, or that he has been a pain in his ass since they first met, or that when he first ate real food he said 'not as filling' which made Ronon nearly blast his head off then and there. It was only till a little time later that they found out what Todd really liked and that was raw cookie dough… the ancient Wraith loved one of the most fattening things the Tau'ri had come up with and he couldn't stop eating the stuff which according to Beckett he could eat as his sole staple in diet and not die of heart problems like any other living thing. Sheppard could only imagine the reaction of whoever the poor bastard was who dealt with Atlantis' food provisions when a request for hundreds of boxes of cookie dough of all things came across his desk. But he really wished there was a camera present either way.

"And then you will be forced to restart your foolhardy war against the Wraith" said Todd

"Not really foolhardy when we've been kicking your asses" smiled Ronon looking to Todd

"The five alliances are soon to be three. With three there could be enough Humans left in the galaxy to sustain all Wraith and they can really begin their war against you" explained Todd and it was true, only in the opening months of the Wraith awakening had they really attacked Atlantis with any form of coherence and after those opening months when the immensity of what they are facing for waking up to early they began their Civil war, and as is in any war there is needed a lot of food required to feed the troops so the populations across Pegasus suffered greatly with many planets being eradicated entirely.

"There is a hyperspace window opening" said Teyla from the co-pilot seat.

Sheppard turned the little cloaked ship around and saw the last seconds of a Hive exiting the crack in reality.

"My Hive has arrived" said Todd which was strange for Sheppard, apparently the Hive that Todd crash landed a little under two years ago wasn't his command Hive and instead was one of the Hives that hadn't had a Queen for some time so was with a skeleton crew before they died in orbit of Atlantis' home after Lantea. "You need to decloak for them to send docking instructions"

"Ya ya, doesn't mean I want to" said Sheppard decloaking the jumper.

"Receiving the docking instructions" said Teyla

"Alright let's do this again..."

Two hours later and Todd returned to SGA - 1 who was waiting in a meeting room which consisted of a table and chairs both made out of wood, it wasn't hard to imagine where the Wraith got these from.

"So what's the verdict Todd?" asked Sheppard, they reason they had to wait was for Todd to get reacquainted with his Hive and figure out what happened to the rest of his Alliance.

"My alliance was destroyed, only three Hives remain and only this one will answer to me" stated Todd as he was the oldest wraith from this Hive and was personally appointed to lead the Hive from their dead Queen the commanders were so radically devoted to Todd it would give the Ori pause.

"Alrighty so what about changing your Wraith?" asked Sheppard

"I have the remaining researchers looking into having the Hive produce the necessary chemicals for the procedure, however we will require food" answered Todd

"Ya ya you'll get your cookie dough" said Sheppard "LT"

When Sheppard looked to LT Willum he knew what he needed to do and pulled out an ancient data crystal "The Beta sites location is on this, I'd imagine you can decode it?" he said handing it to Todd

"Yes, we have extensive knowledge in dealing with Ancient data crystals" said Todd taking it

"We've got your food at the Beta site as well as medical sites set up to change your Wraith, should be expecting us in a week" said Sheppard they hadn't told Todd of the supplies they've stockpiled at the Beta site as there was a possibility that Todd would go his separate ways and the alliance between them would be more of a 'we don't kill each other' kind of thing.

Todd bowed his head in acknowledgement "Then I need to request one last thing from you" said Todd who turned around to the rooms door

"Oh…" said Sheppard looking to who entered the room.

* * *

 **Atlantis, Commanders Office**

 **A week later...**

Woolsey hadn't known what to do now. The Coalition of Planets nearly killed them all when they revealed Todd. It had taken Sheppard shooting the ceiling and pointing his pistol at the back of Todds head before it got the Coalition to be quiet enough for Woolsey to explain the changes to Todd and how they are now officially allied and that soon the Wraith would stop feeding on humans around the galaxy. Todd even spoke to them and suggested that soon the Wraith will leave the Human worlds and retreat to a small corner of the Galaxy. They made sure that they didn't lie to the Coalition of Planets, Todd needed the help of Atlantis and Atlantis needed the help of the Coalition, they really didn't but with one hundred worlds behind Atlantis it gave them political clout throughout the galaxy, so the Coalition was behind Atlantis with real hope that the Wraith will soon be relegated to horror stories.

That was that but now they had to fulfill their promises and it seems such as thing is hard to do now that Todd had only one Hive. And said Hive is sitting over the Beta site and sitting in front of Woolsey was a young girl no older than five but looking at her it was unmistakable, she will grow up to be a Wraith Queen. At the moment she was playing with toys that Teyla brought back from Earth for Torren.

"Why are you giving her to us?" asked Woolsey looking to behind the girl where Todd stood and behind him was Ronon and two marines. Really Todd only had two marine escorts when he is on Atlantis but Ronon never trusted the Wraith, not that the Atlantis expedition actually trusted him. They were in Woolsey's office with the Queen to be sitting in a chair in front of Woolseys mahogany desk, also in the room was Teyla and Sheppard.

"I require peace and the growing Queen isn't conductive to such peace" said Todd

"Wait where did you get her? Your Queens dead" asked Woolsey backing up a bit.

"My Hive was meant to be her protector, when they received my communication they killed her original guards who wouldn't bow to my rule and came with her. She is from the bloodline of a secondary queen in Alliance Beta" said Todd using the designation Atlantis had given to each alliance. Alfa through Echo were the alliances arranged from the strongest to weakest, at least that was the original intent Alliance Delta had managed to gain more ships pushing Alliance Charlie to the fourth most powerful spot. At the moment Alliance Echo is still failing miserably.

"So you stole a child?" asked Woolsey

"You Humans give to much credence to the notion children are precious" said Todd which caused frowns across the room, another thing they hadn't known about Wraith society.

"Alright well what do you expect us to do, she's a Wraith and we haven't figured out how to change Queens to Hybrids yet" said Woolsey, Keller and Beckett had only just been given a complete library of Wraith biology including Queens from Todds Hive, the Cruiser they downloaded stuff from either had an incomplete library or the Queen biology part was in the part of its data banks that was destroyed due to the crash.

"Queens don't require to feed on Humans for the first two decades of life. This one still has a dozen more years before she can feed on a Human. So you use her biology to understand how to change Queens and I may yet have peace" answered Todd. Woolsey for his part just looked at Sheppard and gave him a confused look.

"Kids really annoying, like any other five year old, perhaps with a bit of a God complex" said Sheppard as he had to deal with the little Queen for nearly a week, she really liked being in the jumper so much so that she slept in it for a few days. Sheppard for his part had no reason to say no to her especially after Todd more or less begged him after the little girl had ordered Todd to kill Sheppard so she can keep the jumper… She had been around Wraith for the five years of her life and that sort of thing may have affected her a bit.

"So you agreed to this?" asked Woolsey

"Nope figured I'd ask you first"

"I'll think about it but right now we need to talk about the logistics in changing Todd's crew, and enough food as well the amount at the Beta site isn't enough for what you told us are remaining on your Hive" said Woolsey looking to Todd. It was quickly discovered that after giving the Wraith the ability to feed on normal food that they had quite the ravenous appetite so much so that Beckett figured out that the Wraith commanders actually need double the normal caloric intake for Humans the same size, for the Wraith warriors it was three times.

"My researchers have told me the chemicals are easily produced by Hives and I have my commanders modifying the stasis onboard to turn any Wraith who enter" said Todd

"So what you send your people in the pod for a couple of days and boom they no longer feed on Humans?" asked Woolsey and to Todds nodding head Woolsey leaned back. "So have you started sending the offer to the Alliances?" Now that Todd had decided to fully ally with them they had the plan of giving the Alliances a chance to change before they begin forcing them to, they haven't figured out how they would force them to yet but that's tomorrow's problem.

"Indeed Alliance Echo... they wish to meet" said Todd

"Have anyone else answered?"

"I have not contacted other Alliances. They are at a strong position and are more likely to hunt me down instead of changing considering what happened to the other one of your experiments"

"Michael…" clarified Woolsey to Todds nodding head

"Alright then so Echo wishes to ally with you and by extension us, what is the chance that this may work?" asked Woolsey

"From the knowledge my commanders took from Alliance Beta before returning to me Echo is on the verge of collapse, only five Queens, a dozen Hives and their escorts. Meaning there is not enough genetic material the Queens can use to continue their war" stated Todd "They will bow or break" came the rather bloodthirsty response from Todd giving pause to the others in the room.

"Well I would imagine you are going to use your Hive so what do we do with this one here?" asked Woolsey looking to the little Wraith girl who looked at the man and reached out at him. Woolsey knew what she wanted, he had seen that look in his nieces and nephews before, she wanted to feel his bald head, it was so Human that it kind of freaked him out. It showed that the Wraiths human ancestry was still there, in their children at the very least.

"I can watch over her" suggest Teyla looking to the little girl, with soft eyes. Woolsey gave it to Teyla's motherly instincts

"Is it safe?"

"She is as harmless as a Human child of the same age" said Todd

"Alright well take her to Beckett to get a check and see if he needs anything from her" said Woolsey which was responded with an accusatory look from Teyla. Woolsey knew the reason, even if she was a little child he still has to treat her as a hostile alien race. An alien race that they already had a history with that included ignoring the Geneva convention when dealing with them. Even now it left a bad taste in Woolseys mouth.

As Teyla led the child out of the room Woolsey turned to look at Todd "She better not came back and bite us" he said

"Ellia was apparently fine for the majority of her life before she had to feed" stated Sheppard remembering the only other young Queen that he had come face to face with.

"I forgot about that report… Fine but I want her to be constantly monitored, at the very least through the lifesign detector" said Woolsey referring to the piece of technology that could detect every living thing on Atlantis and can even determine whether a person is fully Human or not, like for Teyla it showed a pulsating dot changing from white and red for her Human and Wraith DNA in her.

"Got it" said Sheppard

"Alright so let's figure out what we are going to be doing for this meeting" said Woolsey

* * *

 **Deep Space, USS Daedalus**

 **A few days later…**

The meeting was set and Woolsey had decided to send out both ships to back Todd up with the meeting which was going to happen soon. Todds Hive and the Supreme Queen from Alliance Echo. Daedalus and Apollo were waiting outside the Hives sensor ranges and waiting to leap into the right to defend their new ally. Caldwell and Ellis never actually liked the alliance with Todd especially since the last time he was on an Earth ship he had taken it over. But they were happy to be out at the very least with the possibility to destroy a Hive. They haven't really had the chance to test the APBs on Hives aside from the superhive that whipped both Apollo and Sun Tzu but that was an outlier.

"Colonel how we looking?" asked Sheppard

"One Hive at long range and Todds arriving in a few minutes" said Caldwell, they might not be in range of the Hives sensors, but that doesn't mean the Hive isn't in range of the Asgard sensors.

"We ready to get in there?" asked Sheppard

"Ready sir" responded the Daedalus sensor officer who was also the pilot. It was a system that the designers of the 304 figured would be most efficient but with the addition of subspace sensors and the Asgard long range sensors there may come a time when the pilot and sensor officer are two separate positions.

"Sir subspace disruptions one Hive and two cruisers" came the sensor officers voice a few minutes later

"A Hive and escorts so glad they would be on time" said Sheppard

Far from the Daedalus the three Wraith ships joined the one and their sensors activated scanning for anyone and anything that may seem fishy about the meeting. The Supreme Queen of Alliance Echo didn't want to admit that her alliance was soon to collapse, the Queen had gained such pide from her seven thousand years of life, while she hadn't fought the Ancient Lanteans she had managed to destroy a human world that were somehow able to build up a spacefleet capable of standing against the Wraith and such a thing was not allowed to exist. She has now heard whispers that the ships of these humans were actually able to escape her wrath and even now five thousand years later the ships we're being spotted around the galaxy. Another prick on her once mighty pride, now she is forced to listen to the possibility of allying with another un-pure Wraith created by these new Lanteans and possibly allying with them, at least that was one option.

From Todds Hive came instructions in how the meeting was to commence, because Todds Hive was at a disadvantage here the Queen and her compliment will come to Todds Hive and not the other way around. An old adage from the founding of Wraith society from millenia ago, The greater would respect the weaker and accommodate the best they can. Now however there was no respect given, there was no accommodation the only reason Wraith follow this dogma was for the simple fact that it proved that the accommodating Hive knew they were lesser than the diplomatic party and the Wraith cherished when others would acknowledge their strength.

So out of the alliance ships can a shuttle, the Wraith shuttle looked like a large Dart yet is actually capable of hyperspace making its main function as a scout. The scouts were a relic of the war against the Ancients as there was a need for Wraith collector fleets, another relic from the Ancient war, to scout out possible feeding worlds and to make sure there were no Ancient warships defending the planet. For the last ten thousand years with the Wraith unchallenged across the galaxy the vessels were downgraded to a shuttle.

What the Tau'ri and one Satedan aboard their ships didn't see was the reception that the Supreme Queen received when she arrived on board, her guards were killed, her commanders were killed, her pilot was killed and she was brought to Todd who sat at the throne that was normally reserved for Queens. She was brought to her knees and Todd explained what would occur, she would answer to him. The rather brutish methods were the only thing that Todd figured would make the Queen submit to a commander and not another Queen. Todd then explained what would occur for her alliance, she and all other Queens were to be placed in stasis aboard Atlantis, with there advanced stasis pods and being under the shield of mighty Atlantis they wouldn't be a harm to him as the new supreme commander of the alliance and it was a safe place to store the important Queens till Beckett and Keller could figure out their transformations. Then all their Hives and cruisers will answer to him with all of their Wraith turned to the Hybrid that he and his Hive was already transformed into. The last thing Todd added was a fact 'bow or break'

For the Tau'ri and Satedan aboard the ships they figured that the meeting went well as the single shuttle left Todds Hive and returned to the alliance Hive with no shots fired between the two. Then it all went to shit.

"Sir subspace disruptions a lightyear directly behind the Alliance Ships!" shouted the sensors officer

"Dammit!" said Sheppard running out the bridge "I'll get in a fighter"

"Battle conditions and tell the Apollo to get ready, APBs charged and military thrust get us into range" commanded Caldwell as red flashed appeared across the ships and the voices of Caldwell and Ellis came over their speakers 'battle conditions, repeat battle conditions get ready to fight'

"Ships dropping out now" said the sensor officer, the reason they weren't able to determine who was travelling in hyperspace the moment they entered hyperspace a lightyear away was due to when entering Hyperspace and for a bit of time afterwards the disruptions are to great to accurately determine the vessels moving through the dimension. "Reading five Hives and twenty cruisers, ID has them as Alliance Delta ships" exclaimed the sensor officer, since the alliance with Todd was getting the two sides closer and closer Todd gave the Tau'ri the ability to distinguish each Hive based on who the Queen for said Hive was and leading from that which Alliance the Hive belonged to

"We've been tricked" stated Caldwell "Get us into the fight"

As the now massive fleet began firing on Todds Hive there long range sensors saw the Daedalus and Apollo appear due to them being in deep space the sublights were allowed to burn at their most powerful bringing the ships to thirty percent the speed of light and bringing them into weapons range rather quickly. And the seemingly impossible thing occurred, the Wraith realized that they are hopelessly outgunned. Four shots from the ships APBs hit one Hive and said Hive was so hopelessly riddled with holes that it had to divert all power to Hull regeneration or the stresses of firing and the stresses coming from the ship just existing would tear it apart. Quickly realizing what power they had the two Earth ships split up and began taking out cruiser after cruiser.

"Communication from Todd, he needs a few minutes to bring his hyperdrive back online and he is launching his Darts"

"Tell him to keep them, also recall all fighters, prepare the Mark Ⅴ's" said Caldwell, the Mark Ⅴ's were one of the first naquadah enhanced nukes that Earth had come up with, but the problem with said nuke was that it was so low powered that the smallest nuke available in the US armoury had more power. The reason the Daedalus and Apollo were outfitted with the low powered nukes was for the simple reason of Darts. "Missiles ready" said weapons officer

"Fire" shouted Caldwell as another cruiser blew up in front of them and out from the top of the Daedalus came three missiles each headed into their own direction, one behind the Daedalus at the attacking Darts, and two in the general direction of Todds Hive that had most darts coming for it. Three seconds later and the missiles exploded creating a massive fireball, that thought looked massive in fact it was more massive than most nukes from the US arsenal but it was so low powered that the Hives could shrug off hundreds of the things but the same couldn't be said for the Darts who died by the thousands.

"Todds got his Hyperdrive and is turning to jump away"

"He is gone"

"Get us out of here"

"Gladly sir"

And with the exit of the two Earth ships the true power of them was shown to Alliance Delta with ten destroyed cruisers, one Hive destroyed and three others riddled with holes, let along the uncountable Darts that three of their missiles managed to destroy. It was an eye opening engagement.

* * *

 **Couldn't really figure out what else to add to this chapter… should be getting back normal lengths next weekend.**


	7. Chapter 7

**SGC, Earth**

 **June 2010**

"Unscheduled offworld activation" came the technicians voice over the comms that was heard throughout the Cheyenne Mountain complex. A year ago it was determined that for more SG teams from all IOA nations to work together the SGC required more room, so NORAD was moved elsewhere and the SGC had been given command of the entire mountain. Many conspiracy nuts went crazy when they learned that another base nearly the size of Area 51 had been classified top secret, what they didn't know was that the base was actually classified above top secret which really spooked many of the actual spooks who had top secret security clearance. Even with the many people in the military, politicians, and civilians have been given the necessary clearance to know of the gate many still aren't privy to the knowledge among the governments of the world.

General Landry stepped into the command room overlooking the gate. The man was thinking of retirement, though he may still be considered young the five years commanding one of the most stressful bases in the Galaxy had taken its toll, his hair had turned completely white and though he wouldn't admit it his daughter has been worried about his heart. The gateroom was filled with men and women charged with defending the gate should anything get past the formidable shield designed after the Ancients gate shield on Atlantis and past that was the Iris, the newest incarnation of the shield defending Earth was made of the Asgardian metal that gate the Iris a nice white hue compared to the gunmetal grey that most things built for the SGC had.

While looking the same the gateroom actually has an arsenal hidden in its walls that would give any would-be invader trouble, four automated staff turrets that can be dropped down from the ceiling, shields for all surfaces in the room, sensors in the walls and floor to detect anything cloaked or otherwise that may enter unannounced.

"Colonel Mitchell on the line, says he's got six injured an SG trainee team and Dr Kavanagh" said the technician as the General arrived

"Lower the shield" said Landry, only the commanding officer could get the shield lowered when it was an unscheduled offworld activation, a strange protocol yet one everyone on base observes nonetheless.

"Cougar incoming" said the technician over the gaterooms speaker, making sure the men watch out incase the thing ever came in speeding and hit one of them. And it did, the cougar came through the gate at nearly 50 km/hr and dead stopped showing how much of a technological marvel the machine is.

Mitchell jumped off the driver's seat and went to check on the six injured that were on the Cougar in various arrangements Dr. Kavanagh, Miles, and William were completely out, Kate and Alexander were in the front with Mitchell with cuts across their face yet that didn't stop them from sharing a cigarette, as for Jen she was in the back with the three knocked out men looking them over, her legs were clearly shown to have been crushed.

Out of the side room came teams of military doctors, the best in the world for what they did. They quickly surmised the most hurt of the six and split up accordingly, two to look at Kate and Alexander, one to Jen to move her to a bed and then to the actual infirmary, two each for Miles and Kavanagh and one to William miraculously seemed fine.

"Watch it with that one, he was hit by some Ancient beam in a bio lab" said Mitchell warning the one medic to what occurred to William.

"Isolation Hood" the medic called out and a specific bed that had a folding plastic hood that came with its own air supply came by and William was quickly deposited into the thing. The last time someone was in a biological research lab it was from a Human world destroyed by something, they currently weren't able to figure out what, either way they were in the 1960s level technology and one airman from SG-13 managed to actually find a lab where they were experimenting with a virus that remarkably looked like the black plague, no one was harmed due to the advanced Ancient medical equipment installed in the SGC but it was still a scare that new protocols were inplace, ones that Kavanagh ignored a half hour ago.

Eventually one by one the six injured were wheeled out on beds, the medics had a hard time removing Alexander from his cigarette to patch up his split lip as he was concussed and confused, eventually they just knocked him out.

"Mitchell my office in an hour for debriefing" said General Landry over the comm

Mitchell was grabbing the laptop that Kavanagh was holding like him life depended on it when they found him, he looked up at Landry

"Yessir"

And so after getting cleaned up and stowing his equipment Mitchell took a short visit to Dr. Lee the man had been promoted to head of SGC research after Carter got the Hammond to do with what she pleased. Mitchell dropped the laptop off to the aging man who has been with the SGC for nearly a decade and had asked him to take everything he can from it. After that he went to the infirmary to get an update on the six men and woman, when he was about to enter the infirmary he ran into Dr. Lam.

"How they doin Doc?" asked Mitchell

"I was headed to the General to report, you can come along as well so I don't have to repeat myself" replied Dr. Lam with a commanding tone that told Mitchell he wasn't going to get a minute of information out of her before they were both in front of Landry.

Eventually they were

"Alright Mitchell go over what happened" said Landry, sitting behind his desk the rather modest accommodations still had the air of unimpeachable command, perhaps that was what the General was trying for or perhaps the fact that this office was home to some of the greatest men the SGC had seen.

"Sir got a message from 2nd-Lt Cole about how they found the research lab they were tasked to look for and that it was a biological research lab. It seems Kavanagh ignored protocol and entered without waiting for experts when Cole reported it. I told him to drag Kavanagh out if he had to, apparently Cole was grabbed by some sort of Ancient device in the lab and collapsed. Trying to get him out Kavanagh activated the self destruct on the lab and eventually the machine was done and Cole was knocked out. So they ran before the lab blew and took quite the amount of hurt when it did, they were just on the edge of a large crater when I got there sir, surprised they were alive" said Mitchell

"Well are they alive?" asked Landry looking to his daughter and chief medical officer at the SGC

"Yessir, the worst was Kavanagh he has bruised ribs, one cracked, a broken arm and swelling in his brain, the nanites lowered it and we're still watching him but he should be fine" started the Doctor, one of the first medical marvels coming out of Area 51 after the fiasco with Henry Wallace the man who kidnapped McKay and his sister to help his daughter with nanites he was able to get ahold of. His reasoning wasn't bad, there were stories of tiny robots fixing people from the inside for decades and now they had the tech to do it at least after a few years of building the code from the ground up.

"Miles Heans was the next worst, broke his left arm and I have surgeons rebuilding that hand, was really one of the worst injuries to an arm I've seen" continued Dr. Lam

"Found that arm underneath a fallen tree" stated Mitchell

"Is there any permanent damage?" asked Landry

"Perhaps a dulled feeling of touch in that hand but he should be fine after the surgery and two months or so of nanite assisted healing. As for Jen Karla she had a few scrapes and bruises that needed stitches but the damage to Miles' arm is mirrored on her leg, the bone broke in two places, she will be out for a month. As for Kate Olins and Alexander Alexi, they were the best off, a minor concussion for Alexander was the worst they got" said Lam the accelerated healing abilities of the nanites proved the little things can do amazing things and at the moment the biomedical engineers at Area 51 think that they can double the speed in a few months time.

"As for William?" asked Landry

"Perfect health" said Lam which surprised them both

"Not a scratched?" asked Landry

"Miles was shielding him when I got there sir" suggested Mitchell

"Nope that wouldn't have done much, but his health isn't the strangest part" continued Dr. Lam "He… grew"

"What?"

"Sir when Cole signed up with Homeworld Command he was recorded at 180 pounds and 6ft 1. He is now 6ft 7 and 190 pounds" said Dr. Lam

"Wait. One doesn't just gain half a foot of height Doctor" said Landry, figuring the extra weight was just a difference the few months had done to Cole.

"Apparently they do" said the Doctor "It has to be something to do with the device whatever it was"

"And it blew up…" said Landry

"Kavanagh had a laptop with him, I gave it the Lee before coming here maybe he found something on it" suggested Mitchell at that very moment Dr. Lee came running into the Generals office "Speak of the devil"

"Colonel, we need to get back to this Lab where is it?" asked Lee ignoring the General which he was fine with, whenever the scientists ignored him it was usually something very exciting that they just couldn't wait to get to the bottom of.

"It blew up doc, what did you find?" asked Landry which caused Lee to do a quick look around and he realized he was in the Generals office.

"In short sir, Captain America" said Lee,

"The General knows nothing about comics Doctor Lee" said Lam knowing that it was a comic and nothing more.

"Oh.. right… Well sir the lab basically makes a person a super soldier" said Lee

"What do the Ancients need super soldiers?" asked Mitchell

"Well not super soldiers per say" backtracking Lee said

"Well why don't you get to it doctor" said General leaning back into his chair, he knew this will be a bit. As for the consequences, it was going to be a pain of epic proportions in terms of reports.

* * *

 **Observation Room, SGC**

 **A few hours later...**

There were a couple of people looking down into the room that held a sleeping William Cole as he hadn't woken up yet. In the room there was Colonel Mitchell, General Landry, Dr. Lam, and Dr. McKay who was brought back from the Alpha site where he was studying the Tria which was quickly becoming a can of worms.

"Well that just isn't fair" said Dr. McKay for the fifth time since he arrived at the SGC

"What we need to be prepared for is the possibility that McKay is right" said Lam ignoring McKay, he had been complaining since the last time such a device was found it didn't increase height or muscle mass, Cole was now up to 6ft 8 and 210 pounds. The amount of muscle mass increase was so great that they had to start feeding him intravenously as most of his fat reserves were used up.

"How fast can we get him to Atlantis?" asked Landry

"The Hammond and Victory is slated to leave in three months to relieve Daedalus and Apollo sir. We can throw as many supplies as we can on one ship and send her along with the other following with the rest of the supplies when we put them together" suggested Mitchell, Since Atlantis arrived in the Pegasus the ZPMs that once powered her to fly back to the Milky way and use the wormhole drive were nearly burned out, all below 5%. Now the protocol is to have Atlantis only dial Earth when a catastrophe may happen. As for the SGC there were still years away from having a Neutrino Ion generator built that was large enough to give them the power to dial Atlantis.

"It doesn't matter either way, the machine was torn apart" said McKay to the others surprise

"Why was it torn apart?" asked Landry

"Weir didn't want any more accidents with it and I wanted to study it..." said McKay

After a few seconds of silence "Well?" said Mitchell

"There are many things that I can do, but an Ascension Machine is not something that any human can understand" stated McKay defending himself

"So he is a dead man" said Mitchell, at that moment the door to the room opened and Kate with Alexander pushing Jen in a wheelchair walked in and quickly froze when seeing who was in the room

"Sorry sirs" said Alexander backing up Jen

"No problem son, come on in" said Landry "He's your squadmate right?"

"Yessir the three weeks of SG training squad Dragon" said Jen as the three entered the observation room, part of SG training was that they were split up into squads of five, each one named after a mythical animal. There was Manticore, Basilisk, Thunderbird, Phoenix and so on. For William, Miles, Jen, Kate, and Alexander they were given the name Dragon. Other than giving a designation to that squad there was really nothing else to the name, what the trainees didn't know was that SGC psychiatrists had suggested giving each squad a name so that the trainees may form bonds with the people of their squad and have a sort of comradeship under Homeworld Command before even joining whatever outfit they would be officially assigned to.

"I haven't heard what's wrong with him" asked Kate

"Well what do you know of ascension?" asked Lam being the doctor she was use to telling bad news

"Only Ancients and those helped by Ancients can ascend" said Kate, when she first joined up as a Marine she was fascinated with the old four races and learned everything Homeworld Command had about them, at least at her security clearance level.

"Well technically anyone who is sufficiently evolved can Ascend but the Ancients were just the first. You see what's fascinating is that there may possibly be…" said McKay

"McKay" said Mitchell cutting off the scientist from one of his long tangents.

"Wait Cole is human and he's not millions of years more evolved than the rest of us. What does this have to do with Ascension?" asked Jen

"Well four years ago we found a device on Atlantis. During the Ancients research into ascension they built a device that could artificially advanced the less advanced among them to a point at which they could ascend on their own" said McKay "and that was the kind of machine that the Lieutenant was hit with"

"So he's going to ascend?" asked Kate surprised, she knew strange stuff happened all the time with Ancient tech involved, but this…

"Nope, to ascend there is a required spiritual component that apparently as a young race Humans do not have" said McKay who was quoting from research notes from said device on Atlantis

"So he's gonna be more advanced than the rest of us then?" asked Jen

"Again No, there's a point at which the mind can only take so much, at least a human one. When Cole reaches the point where an older race like the Ancients may ascend he will… die" said McKay bluntly

" _Fuck_ " swearing and speaking for the first time was Alexander in his native Russian

"How long until he dies?" asked Kate she was rather clinical about it, she had lost friends in the middle east before, she even lost a man during training so this wouldn't be her first time in either respect.

"Well last time this happened it was me and I had a few days before I would've died" said McKay

"So we can fix him?" suggested Kate realizing McKay was fixed so why not Cole?

"Dr. McKay fixed himself using the same machine that changed him and with a greatly elevated intelligence that put him above and beyond anyone" stated Dr. Lam

"Well maybe not so greatly…" said McKay which resulted in him getting glares from Mitchell and Dr. Lam.

"So we need to use the machine…" said Jen knowing the thing was vaporized along with anything in three hundred meters "This machine should be a million years older than the one on Atlantis right?"

"Probably more so, what's your point Lt?" asked Mitchell

"The older model is always the simpler one" said Jen which was followed by McKay snapping his fingers repeatedly and having a eureka expression.

"That's true, we know the Ancients only started experimenting with ascension when the plague hit them. This machine may not do what we think it does and we know it also is making him into Captain America…" said McKay turning to the door and walking toward it "I need to look over its database"

The remaining in the room watched him leave

"Captain America?" asked Kate

"Whatever he was hit with, it's changing his body in ways I've never seen before. He is gaining both height and muscle mass at an astounding pace, the body should be damaged at this point but he is healing himself at the same time" explained Dr. Lam

"So he may yet live?" asked Alexander

"I wouldn't get your hopes up son" said Landry who put his hand on Alexander's shoulder in which Alexander had to suppress a flinch, the native Russian may be young but he still had a few prejudices from his parents "There are many things we can do, but there is still a lot we can't" and with that he left, he had paperwork to do.

"Will he wake up?" asked Jen

"Should have by now, but he is showing signs of malnutrition due to the changes" said the Doctor

"So he is starving?"

"Yup, gonna need to find a more direct method in saturating his body with nutrients… We tried nanites, they can carry more dense nutrition and release it at a rate that won't shock his system but they were immediately attacked by his immune system, also more advanced" explained Dr. Lam

"Or we may feed him McDonalds. No?" asked Alexander who looked into the room where William was rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. Dr. Lam quickly left the observatory and went to William, Mitchell walked up to the wall and pressed a button, the trainees quickly realized it was so they could listen in on the room.

"How you doing Lieutenant?" asked Dr. Lam walking into the room and taking his pulse, she could've just looked at the machine to do so but this way it gave the patient the feeling that they were safe.

"Fine… a bit hungry. What happened?" asked William still waking up

"You were knocked out by an Ancient device and brought back to the SGC" said Dr. Lam "Look right here for me" as she checked his eyes to see if they reacted the way they should.

"Ya I remember, thing grabbed me and I guess knocked me out. Anyone else hurt?" asked William

"Everyone is fine, a bit banged up due to the lab self destruct being flipped. You are the fourth to wake up actually" replied the Doc still looking into his eyes, there was something not right about his reactions that she couldn't figure out why.

"Well that's good…" said William, the observation window was a mirrored surface so he couldn't see his teammates behind it. "So am I alright?"

"Well… William that device is making you evolve and at this current rate you may reach a point where it will overwhelm your body and you may die" said Dr. Lam trying to put it as gently as possible

"Ohh… well that sucks…" said William to everyone's surprise, Dr Lam usually gets an immediate reaction of shock or anger. Not once has anyone learned of their impending death and they immediately were sad about it. "I feel so great though…" Now fully waked up William noticed how he actually feels and it was great, and looking down he noticed that he may be larger than he should be… "What happened to me? I'm larger than I should be..."

"The machine not only forcefully evolved you but it also changed your body so that you are growing, your now 6ft 8 and nearly thirty pounds heavier than you were a few months ago" said Dr. Lam and now began looking at William with a quizzical look, he actually look depressed.

"Well this is strange…" said William looking at himself "Why would an Ancient machine do this…" from somber tone to an inquisitive one... which was even stranger.

"Well we can figure that out later I need to run a few tests and perhaps get you into a scanner" said Dr. Lam

"Alright"

It was half an hour later that McKay came walking into the infirmary, William was lying in the Ancient medical scanner and in the bed next to him Miles was knocked out, he was surrounded by Kate, Jen, and Alexander. Dr Lam was on the other side of the infirmary looking into the diagnostic of the scanner.

"Oh hell remember the first time in the cafeteria?" asked Alexander, they were all laughing about the different stories they were sharing with each other, for Alexander and Kate it was marine stories, for Jen it was residency stories as a training nurse. Now they were on to a week ago with the zats.

Laughing Jen talked through the gasps "You were knocked out and in your potatoes for an hour by the time the drill was over" pointing to Kate who herself was smiling

"Not as bad as dropping when your half naked" said Kate remembering when Mitchell had combined both a 5 am wake up call where they were meant to get dressed and equipped for battle asap before the 'enemy' had time to attack, after three minutes they came barging in all the barracks with zats firing.

"Ah I got so close to getting one of them that time…" said Alexander

"What five meters?" responded William looking at McKay who walked up to the scanner that was at the moment at the foot of the bed and activated it, William quickly laid down as the thing began moving up the bed.

"What you looking for Doc?" asked Alexander

"Possibly something amazing" said McKay just a Dr. Lam walked up

"Well I just went over the scans and cross referenced with McKays scans from a few years ago, It seems that it isn't the same at least at this moment. The first scan was a day after McKay was hit so maybe it will be more similar tomorrow" said the Doctor looking to William who was lying down

"So anything interesting Doctor?" asked William looking to McKay

"Yup" said McKay turning his tablet to Dr. Lam who went wide eyed at the screen.

"So good or bad?" asked William

"Well I'd say good Lieutenant, you're an Ancient" said McKay to the confusion looks of everyone in the room.

* * *

 **Area 51, Earth**

 **A week later…**

William had spent the following week going through multiple tests and being passed around to nearly every biologist at the SGC and eventually at Area 51. The news that a Human was turned, DNA and all into an Ancient made waves across all of Homeworld Command. What William had explained to him was that the machine was made during the decline of the Ancient empire in the Milky way. The plague that had broken out at Vis Urban had spread across the empire, all quarantine protocols failed, all cures didn't work, all the technology of the almighty Ancients had failed them in the end. As for the machine, it was the brainchild of an Ancient scientist who thought that only a being with a perfect genetic makeup could survive and fight off the plague and that was the purpose of the machine, not to ascend but to perfect, it failed of course. It was able to give people the ability to fight off the plague at first which brought the scientist great fame and many of the Ancients used the machine to turn into the new 'perfect beings' but eventually every defense fails and when the genetic makeup was undermined billions of Ancients were susceptible and what the Asgard found out millions of years later the Ancients learned at that moment, the technological manipulation of DNA made ascension impossible and removes any other possible routes to help oneself. Which is why William was relatively fine, the machine didn't modify his body to make it the most advanced as it could be like the one on Atlantis did for McKay, it rebuilt his DNA from the ground up making him not only into an Ancient, but also what one particular biologist said 'a perfect specimen of Humanity' even though he wasn't a human anymore.

As for William it turned out that the machine had a strange effect on him, he had limited telekinesis or as Miles said 'Bloody hell its the force.' He was also an empath, a word he learned from Dr. Lee, he could sense others emotions and unfortunately it affected him. When people in his vicinity were sad he was sad, when they were happy he was happy. After a week of growth he was determined to be a grand total of 6ft 11 and around 320 lbs, he ate a lot of food this past week, all his senses were heightened and his mind sharper than it was. The strangest part was that most of his weight gain was muscle, he had the body of a greek god and the powers to go along with it and he hated every minute of it. At the moment he was at Area 51 in front of the chair taken from the Tria and now controlled all drone weapons at Antartica.

"So when you're ready Lieutenant" said Dr. Leed, the older gentleman has been the head researcher at Area 51 for quite awhile and since William had returned to Area 51 he more or less claimed dominion on the new Ancient. William sat in the chair and it activated without a second of delay.

"Good. Good... only five others had been able to activate it without effort" said Dr. Leed, obviously this included General O'Neill, Colonel Sheppard, and Dr. Beckett what William didn't know was that the other two were scientists that were stationed at Area 51 and were ready to be called upon to use the chair if the top two were not available.

"Well Doc what now?" asked William, he was happy but he also knew that was just the bleed thru from Dr. Leed and he tried to suppress it, but it was really hard to.

"Alright the chair is disconnected from the Antarctic, I need you to look through and find the simulated drones" said Dr. Leed and that was what William tried to do.

"How many drones did you give me?"

"Should be a thousand lying in wait in the 302 Hangar above us, you don't need to go further"

"I am reading nearly a million… they are in the Antarctic. And the thousand above us, but they're fake…"

"How did you get past my lockout? I'm reading it's still up" asked Dr. Leed

"I don't know Doc but I'm seeing the million drones, and I somehow know they are real and the thousand up above us are fake"

"Amazing, the feedback coming from the chair is telling me as much as well. It seems you can break out of my lockout without me noticing and can tell the difference from fake drones to real ones…" smiled Dr. Leed "No one has been able to do that"

"That's good right?" asked William perky, before suppressing the emotion knowing it was again the result of Dr. Leed.

"Alright for now only focus on Nevadah then" said Dr. Leeds and William did

"The hell is this?" asked William solely focusing on the area within a few hundred kilometers from him and underground, where he was, he could feel responses from a dozen different items that were real.

"I have no idea, giving you access to the holograms can you show them to me?" asked Dr. Leed, all his computer did was itemize what was connected to the chair and it did show him the dozen items, but not where they were. With a quick button press the Asgard holograms connected to the chair were reconnected and William quickly modified them to show the position of the dozen items, all either on the same level or below them.

"I don't have sensors so I can't give you anything about layout, just direction and distance" said William

"Well I know these five right here" said Dr. Leed pointing to a grouping below them "They're the damaged jumpers we got from Atlantis…"

"So I can pilot jumpers remotely?" asked William this time actually surprised

"That wouldn't make sense, probably just a connection for quick diagnostics" said Dr. Leed "We should get back to the task"

"Alright a thousand drones a few meters above us" said William focusing on the fake drones, it was a strange feeling when focusing on them, one he only experienced in dreams. He knew that they were fake, so obviously fake, but they were real enough that he could almost feel them. His mind screamed at him to get away from the reality offending item.

"Alright, two Ha'taks and compliment attacking. Go" said Dr. Leed

And that was what William saw, he immediately knew that these Ha'tak were of Anubis upgrade along with five Al'kesh, all having cloaking devices, and out of the Ha'tak came two dozen death gliders. He chose targets based on what he figured he could do and if these ships were filled with actual people they may have laughed at the amount of weapons coming after them. Ten drones flew out of the hangar and shot toward the attackers.

First up were the Death Gliders, usually the Al'kesh and Death Gliders would attack together, but it being a simulation they sort of arrived in waves. The two dozen Gliders fired at the drones and hoping to destroy them but they moved the second the Gliders fired, their firing track determined and course correction plotted and executed to get out of the way of the bolt. What happened next was something amazing.

The drones in themselves are made up of a number of different components, the most important one for fighting Wraith is the strange skin of the drone that heats up and can burn through armour and hull with ease. Usually this effect only works for a few second before the power capacitors are depleted for this particular task and the drone detonates using a different capacitor for energy. What William had done is drained the explosion capacitor and poured as much energy as he could into the engines and skin.

The results of this work was that the drones quickly skewered the Death Gliders and then running out of energy embed themselves into a few unfortunate Gliders killing their virtual pilots. As for the end result, seven of the ten drones were gone and the two dozen Gliders were dead. This was a complete shock for Dr. Leeds who now only noticed the second wave of thirty drones coming up behind the first. This is the moment at which the bottom usually falls out of first time users, the Al'kesh cloaked. For others they never had the time to do an in depth look at the attackers but William had that knowledge feed to him almost immediately after they arrived so he knew they had cloaking devices. What he had done was spread out the drones so that they had a large gap between them, but not enough for an Al'kesh to pilot through. The massive net that he made allowed him to catch every single one of the Al'kesh in a record winning time.

Next up was the Ha'taks, usually most first timers send massive numbers of drones to tear through them to bring them down but William had a better plan. Splitting the remaining ten drones into five each, he targeted the anti-gravity drives on the Ha'taks and using their shield ignoring abilities quickly took out all of the devices that a few scientists named 'Newtons bane'. And then the Ha'taks were turned into a half million ton rock and dropped.

"Done" said Wiliam with a slightly smug smile.

"Well… I have to admit I'm speechless" said Dr. Leed

"So we done?" asked William

"Yes I'll take take the inputs and outputs then put you on the ranking, I'd imagine your the new benchmark given your an actual Ancient" said Dr. Leed

"With DNA only doctor" replied William, he hated being called an Ancient. True he wasn't Human by DNA but that also meant that everyone with the ATA gene wasn't fully Human, so it was a stupid specification he thought.

"Yes yes Lieutenant, Well that should be it for the day" replied Leed only to look at his watch "Damn really late…" it really was late and most people would have either gone to their assigned quarters or have been flown home.

William for his part slept on base along with most scientists, yet he wasn't headed to bed yet due to the simple fact that he only really needed five hours of sleep, one of the actual perks of being an Ancient, he could sleep in an extra three hours and still be considered 'on time'. At the moment William was headed into the lab area of the base where Mark was hanging around in Felgers lab. The rather strange man having one of the most lax rules for his lab and really that means he has no rules for his lab so Mark had a small fridge full of beer. When William walked into the lab Mark was working at a computer that had a small hologram showing a schematic that William didn't recognize, when he entered Mark looked up and William felt for a second, a short burst of a feeling, this usually happens when the person has an intense feeling like...

"Was that fear you son of a bitch?" asked William smiling

"You can't blame me I'm not use to this yet" replied Mark gesturing to William "You left ten days ago and you come back nearly a foot taller and twice the weight, you're massive"

"Ya well it kinda sucks for me to ya know?" said William walked to the fridge and taking out a bottle of orange pop and a beer he handed to

"If it sucks why not drown it out in the sweet embrace of alcohol" smiled Mark while he opened his beer and took a swig

"Another one of the shitty aspects of this. I can't get bloody drunk" said William taking a drink from his pop

"Well sucks for you nerd" replied Mark going back to his computer

"So what's this for?" asked William looking to the hologram "I thought you don't get holograms"

"We do if we request one from manufacturing, installed the thing myself today while you were trapped by Dr. Leed" said Mark "He has been giving us a lot of leniency with our new project, hasn't made a single ultimatum on this new one as he did with the APBs"

"By your project I'd imagine you mean Felgers, speaking of which how many APBs you got left to play with?" asked William looking around the lab after the destruction of the twentieth APB Dr. Leed was no longer happy with Felger wasting resources and told him he could only have five more APBs and if they were all destroyed he didn't get any more.

"Down to one and it is our project I'm doing half the design for it"

"So what is the new project?"

"It seems we've been assigned the shuttle project with our brothers and sisters in the Fatherland" said Mark with a bad German accent

"Ah good ol German efficiency eh?" asked William noticing Marks irritation both through his new powers and his many years of being friends.

"It's not them that's the problem it's what the big wigs are asking for, we got the original specs of the shuttle Destiny uses and they are asking for something similar to that" said Mark

"That shouldn't be hard, the thing is what three million years old?" asked William

"Closer to four but it has a shield that hugs the frame instead of a bubble like ours, we have no clue as to how that works or how the sublights it is using work. And we can't ask for a back and forth from the Destiny as they nearly die every other week" replied Mark

"Well I'm sure you'll figure it out" said William looking at the hologram "Sublights?"

"Yup from the jumpers, the problem is this right here" said Mark pressing a few buttons and the hologram focused on the front section of the engine pod which was a complete solid block with no textures unlike the back part that showed multiple parts and their connections.

"What am I looking at?"

"An Ancient security system, the unintended consequence of what makes the sublights run, or the results of whatever miracle alloy that the Ancients used to miniaturize the sublights, no clue. Its not allowing us to scan it though, Goa'uld, Asgard, even one Ancient medical scanner we managed to jury-rig failed to scan what is happening in that section of the engine pod" said Mark pointing to the offending section

"So you're stuck figuring out with our own eyes" said William trying to suppress the anger coming off of Mark. Anger was one of more hard emotions to suppress William had found out, it came off people like waves and he had to really focus to stop him from being influenced by it.

"There is a reason why I said a miracle alloy, that part is encased in something that we can't take apart. Apparently Huan threw the thing into a furnace and heated it up to a few thousand degrees and it didn't warp" said Mark

"Ah a truly Human idea, throw the thing into a furnace and see what happens" said William to a smiling Mark

"Any way I think I found an answer to your sleeping problem" said Mark mentioning Williams problem in sleeping since the accident a week ago. Should someone be having a bad dream, which was a usual occurrence in this profession, within a few dozen meters of him he wakes up terrified and with night sweats. While at the SGC he claimed a room at the very bottom of the base to stay far as possible away from people as possible and at Area 51 he had permission from Colonel Yin to take a bed on the empty Sun Tzu while it was in dry dock.

"Oh what?" asked William as Mark pulled out a flying saucer looking device "The hell is a flying saucer gonna help me?"

"This is an anti-prior device, made for the Ori advanced Humans slash priests. It stopped their powers and if I think it works…" said Mark who touched the top of the device and it lit up

"Oh my God…" said William closing his eyes and smiled

"I'd imagine it works?" asked Mark

"Shut up" replied William who was enjoying the silence, since the moment he woke up he heard either the constant drumming of machines, or the whispers of people talking to themselves due to his enhanced hearing and he was also constantly bombarded with the feelings of those around him. Now however there was no emotions and no machines running anywhere in the lab section. It was pure silence and pure bliss.

"Well, I'll leave it to you" said Mark grabbing his beer and headed to bed

* * *

 **Area 51, Earth**

 **The Next Day…**

The mess hall was silent at this moment, they just started making lunch a few minutes ago but that never mattered, Area 51 was filled with mostly scientists and engineers responsible for manufacturing and the maintenance of the 304 ships that come and go regularly. The results of this was that there was no schedule that everyone kept for eating, they would come and go regularly taking the food from the buffet tables made by the kitchen and usually not even bothering to sit down and eat, something needing to be researched or conduit realigned. Area 51 was hallmark of busyness and not even food slowed it down, but for William he used the excuse of food to get away from Dr. Leed so he was usually in the mess hall when not with Dr. Leed eating his mounds of food that was needed to keep him from feeling hungry till dinner, another one of the better aspects of this William was one of those people who 'lived to eat' instead of the others who 'eat to live' so this was one of the few bonuses. At this moment a man with glasses walked in and stopped at the other end of the table in front of William who was eating and reading over the designs for the anti-prior device.

"Can I sit here?" he asked and when William looked up it turned out to be Dr. Daniel Jackson, the living legend who was the first through the gate and ascended twice to live among the actual Ancients, William stood in front of the man coming to his full seven foot height and towered over Daniel and he held out his hand

"Of course sir, its an honour to meet you" said William and Daniel shook his hand

"Oh ya, you don't really need to call me sir, Doctor or Daniel is just fine" said Daniel he knew that such a thing was common place for some of the newer recruits when they met him so he was use to it, he really would hate to know what awaited him if or when they eventually reveal the stargate to the rest of the world.

"What can I help you with Doctor?" asked William sitting down as Daniel slid into the other side of the table

"Well I was interested in how your adjusting to your new powers, I was quite interested when learning that someone was turned into an Ancient as I'm sure you can tell from what I hear" said Daniel

"It was certainly an adjustment but it has gotten a lot easier and not an Ancient doctor just a man with different DNA" said William ignoring the mention of one of his abilities

"That is an understatement Lieutenant, you have been turned into one of the greatest races to exist in the Universe. Especially at a point in their evolution that makes you the greatest of them, let alone the increase of your physique" replied Daniel

"Everyone with the ATA gene is at least part Ancient, I've seen reports of people in Pegasus that are part Wraith that doesn't make them those races even with the DNA" responded William

"None of those people have had their DNA from the bottom up rebuilt to look like a different race, you may look the same as Human and your body may, in some aspects, act Human but you are anything but" countered Daniel to Williams increasing annoyance.

"Yet this was the result of a machine, I was born Human and still am just with different DNA" responded William a bit forcefully.

"I guess…" responded Daniel now realizing Williams forceful remarks and deciding to change the subject "How are you adjusting to your abilities?"

"The empath thing was annoying and the telekinesis was limited so it kinda sucks" replied William with a smile

"Can you heal, Rodney and most advanced beings we've encountered can heal by only touching that damaged part" asked Daniel

"Nope"

"Did you try?" asked Daniel

"Sure I did"

"How?"

And as a result William showed the top of his left hand to Daniel and taking his right pointer finger and drew a line across his hand while making a squelch sound.

"You cut yourself?" asked Daniel with a shocked tone

"Don't make me sound like some emo teen Doctor. It barely hurt and I hela naturally much faster. But still I wasn't able to heal and now if I get this to work I'll never have any other abilities" said William gesturing to his tablet

"What do you mean?" asked Daniel

"This" replied William lifting the activated anti-prior device from the seat next to him and putting it on the table so Daniel could see it. He immediately knew what it was as he used it multiple times and had it used on him once before.

"You are blocking all your abilities?" he asked

"Yup. Best day of my life when I found out this was a thing. Just need to find a way to miniaturize it and I can put it in a watch maybe... " responded William

"Your abilities are the results of your ascension to being an Ancient. They should be fostered instead of suppressed" said Daniel what he said was more of a visceral reaction to finding out what William was doing, not really thinking his statement through.

"And when you 'ascend' to an Ancient you can deal with the abilities but at the moment I am not dealing with this" responded William with an accusatory tone.

Daniel finding the hostility and realized that it may not be best for him to try and force William had decided to back off "Alright Lieutenant, but I want you to consider that just maybe that this is a gift, just maybe"

"Ya, of course, can't sleep peacefully for most of the week after this happened. Certainly a gift Doctor" said William

"Alright, I guess I'll see you around Lieutenant" said Daniel who got up an left, he had to talk to Dr. Leed.

* * *

 **The first race has arrived! It may take a bit for the second and third, as for your comments...**

 **Chloe** **: For Edora I realized my mistake the moment you said that and realized that Langara was suppose to have the 2 billion population, but I have decided to stick with it with the reasoning that there must have been many times where primitive populations were saved from the slavery and needed a place to be settled away from the Lucian Alliance so the SGC put them all on Edora which also helps in what I want for Edore, a planet greatly in debt to Earth and is happy to help them in anyway.**

 **As for the Daedalus and Coalition, it wasn't shown off as the meeting was underground and it is technically impossible to beam hundreds of people at the meeting place onto a Daedalus and there may come a time when it will happen but with a smaller amount of people.**

 **MrBogus** **: Ya I tried to set up for the new races but at this moment it just keeps on getting longer and longer till they could all come back. At this moment I laid out a point soon where there is gonna be a 'fast forward' and there has been hints of the returning races if you have been paying attention…**


	8. Chapter 8

**Deep Space, Milky Way Galaxy**

 **June 2010**

Kefflin was a simple man, he liked people who were loyal, honest, and punctual. He asked himself many times that perhaps that it was to much to ask of the idiots/Warlords that made up the Alliance now a days. Back in the time Netan commanded the Alliance no one was late as no one could afford to be late, now however Kefflin had been waiting at this particular spot in the middle of nowhere, the nearest system had once been the home to a insect looking race that apparently was useless to the Goa'uld so they killed them all some three thousand years ago. Kefflin could only imagine the horrified looks on the primitives as orange blasts came raining down onto their cities and towns from orbit, every blast taking out thousands of them with their 200 megatons of power being unleashed, but that is neither here nor there as at this moment three Ha'taks exited hyperspace each one coming from different directions and owned by different idiots as Kefflin called them.

"Kefflin the vessels have arrived and have dispatched their transports to us" said one of Kefflins men

"I can see that idiot, bring them to the meeting room" responded Kefflin, he had to get his anger out of him now or he might upset one of the idiots and have his plans ruined.

"Okay" responded the man as Kefflin walked out of the room and into the meeting room. Eventually three other men joined him and each took a seat around the table, The three men were what remained of Netans seconds as the remaining Warlords of the Alliance were all either upstarts or more than stupid that Kefflin didn't like. Around the table was Karug, Rameris, and Slaviash.

"Kefflin my dear friend why have we not been welcomed by a feast. Is it not tradition by this point?" asked Rameris who himself seemed to be having to many feasts as evident by his expanded belly. It was an old tradition dating back to Lucia where the pact was formed to make the Alliance, a feast was held before the talking started but Kefflin wasn't having any of it at this moment.

"You missed the feast by being an hour late. I have asked the cooks to start again but it may be a few hours before the feast may begin again" nearly spitting his hatred Kefflin responded which caused Karug and Slaviash to immediately understand the anger coming from him and both stood in their chairs a little straighter. As for Rameris he merely deepened his frown.

"What a shame, I guess we could just talk about how our business is doing before the feast begins. How about it my friend Kefflin, I'm sure you are getting back on your feet now that the mess with the Tau'ri have caused you has been cleaned up right?" asked Rameris who was now purposely stepping on Kefflins toes by mentioning the near massacare of a large portion of his fleet and the destruction of a Station that he stockpiled many of his products on

"Yes now that the Tau'ri seemed focus elsewhere in terms of the territories closer to Earth I don't expect them to be a nuisance to me anytime soon" responded Kefflin reminding Rameris that his territories were the closest the Earth. Also something the Kefflin knew was that Rameris was expanding his territories and repositioning strongholds as far away from Earth and as fast as he possibly can.

"Yes… Well Karug I'm told that you have been able to gain great success in the slave trade, tell me how lucrative could it be. Personally I see no reason as to invest in product that may die on you" said Rameris trying to get away from the conversation of how he was running as far from the Tau'ri as he could.

"Mhmm, indeed while I have been losing a large amount of product due to Tau'ri attacks I have been able to mostly mitigate such losses by selling large amounts of food from primitive worlds I've attacked. There are still quite a few worlds in the former Goa'uld domain that haven't been claimed by anyone and I have been able to capitalize on such items" responded Karug. Everyone at the table knew that wasn't the whole truth or even it was more likely to be a lie as no one in any position that they were all in would give away such information freely. They may have been the last of the old guard but that didn't bring comradeship only more reason to hate each other.

"And what of you Slaviash? I've heard that you have been losing entire planets worth of harvests due to Tau'ri attacks" asked Kefflin at this moment seizing the opportunity that Rameris had given him.

"Yes I've lost a number of harvests on over a dozen worlds due to what the Tau'ri have apparently named Napalm. I found one of the misfired deployment devices on one world and had some of my people study it, nearly impossible to stop the flames with water. I could only imagine the sick minded Tau'ri who had decided to make such a weapon" said Slaviash who was at this moment seething in rage.

"And this is what I wished to talk about when bringing you all here" said Kefflin catching all three of the hierarchs off guard.

"To rub our faces in our weaknesses?" accused Slaviash

"No my friend, to point out who the true enemy is. The Tau'ri had destroyed the Goa'uld and left the people of the Galaxy to deal with the mess. We here tried to create a stable system under Netan but they had dashed out our leaders one after another and continuously attack us, it is hypocrisy!" said Kefflin

"Here here!" responded Rameris who himself had no idea where this was going but figured it would be a good place to hang his hat so to speak for the meantime.

"So what do you suggest we go after the Tau'ri?" asked Karug

"We have over a hundred Ha'tak combined do we not?" asked Slaviash already seeing Earth burn in his mind and the Tau'ri ships destroyed.

"And the Goa'uld had thousands each, we cannot survived against the defenses of Earth with only numbers. The Jaffa may come to the help of the Tau'ri and possibly even the Asgard" responded Karug, for most of the galaxy the knowledge that the Asgard have died out was still a secret. Yet the knowledge that Earth had access to large portions of Asgard knowledge was not and as such Earth was more feared for what they could bring to a battle and attacking Earth was considered suicidal as it both invited the wrath of Earth and the Asgard.

"The Asgard are a myth. When was the last time a so called Asgard vessel had been seen in the galaxy. Three thousand years ago? Four thousand? They are a myth nothing more" waving his hand Rameris knows of the history of the Goa'uld and Asgard and how a pact was made for specific planets and the now the Tau'ri have claimed protection over said planets but Rameris had put it up to Ancient weapons that defend these planets and not those of a race that was supposedly more advanced than the Goa'uld.

"I have heard that the Asgard are dead and gone like the Ancients" said Slavish who himself had believed in the Asgard, it was a back and forth between most of the wider galaxy as to whether the Asgard existed or not. The Jaffa as a whole believed in the Asgard as anything that the Goa'uld feared they usually worshiped the land they walked upon. For most of the Humans they had no idea either way, those allied closely with Jaffa and Earth said they did exist while those otherwise said it was a myth.

"Either way we must be wary of these people" said Kefflin "Now we all here have been hurt by the Tau'ri from their golden chairs no better than the Goa'uld in suppressing others with their might. I hereby suggest a pact between all of us, we combine our forces and territories and work on ways to destroy the Tau'ri"

"Is that you then, the rumors of an attack on Earth?" asked Rameris

"No I have not heard of this. Who is attacking Earth?" asked Kefflin surprised

"I have heard Masim is taking revenge on them for his daughters death on board the Destiny" said Karug the knowledge of the Destiny had been spreading like wildfire across the galaxy. In large part due hundreds of cultures and civilizations both long gone and brand new associate the nine chevron address with ultimate understanding or power depending where you are. Even the Goa'uld had a name for what was on the other side of the nine chevrons, they called it Ra's Palace. Even though Ra also had no clue as to what the nine chevron address was.

"He is a coward and will most likely try to sneak in bombs like his predecessor had done" said Rameris

"If he can sneak a bomb onto Earth than perhaps we can make use of whatever he uses to get past Earths defenses. I even heard Kiva was on Earth before going to the Destiny" added Karug

"So Masim had found a way to sneak past Tau'ri warships. However if we are to use him in any useful way we must stop his attack on Earth or he will be hunted by the Tau'ri specifically" said Rameris, with the nodding of both Karug and Slaviash around the table Kefflin knew his plan of striking back at the Tau'ri have gotten one step closer to fruition.

"Then we must eat and then figure out the details of our new greater alliance" said Kefflin who rang a bell and the first plates for the feast began.

It was five hours later when Slaviash, Karug, and Rameris had left to go about their business.

* * *

 **Area 51, Earth**

 **July 2010**

William entered the rather small office compared to his usual areas where he hangs out, either Felgers Lab which was rather large considering the kind of man who owns it and the other lab was Leeds which was massive that had a dozen other scientists running around doing a number of different research and engineering. William had a duffle bag over his shoulder which he dropped next to a chair before he himself dropped into said chair.

"Hello Doctor heard you want to talk to me" said William looking to the other side of the office where a small older woman who sat behind a desk. Well small for William, everyone was small now that he was nearly seven feet tall, still the woman was probably just under six feet.

"Ah yes Second Lieutenant Cole, I am Doctor Keans" said the Doctor, she was what some people might call a real Doctor as she was the resident psychiatrist. It was a standard due to the number of military who are on base, which are either ship crews or some of the best from around the world who are stationed here for SG training. What was unknown to most people on base was that the good Doctor had been with the SGC since before the beginning, in that she was the woman who chose those few people who first walked through the gate to Abydos. She had access to everyone's files and was an amazing judge of character, in that she knew which ones would sacrifice themselves for the security of the country and the planet as a whole.

"So any reason why I am here?" asked William

"Ah yes William, I am hoping to help you out in any problems that you may have due to your transformation that occurred two weeks ago" said Dr. Keans who got up from her desk and walked to a chair in front of William.

"Not many problems, actually it's been pretty sweet I can eat nearly anything I want and my amazing metabolism keeps me fit"

"Now I don't believe that for a minute, you went through a big change that will affect the rest of your life and from what I hear is already affecting your life at the moment" said the Doctor who tilted her head in and smiled a William, It kinda freaked him out because that exact posture was the one his grandmother use when she knew he was either lying or being bad. "You can feel my amusement now can't you?"

"Ah the empathy stuff, nope I'm good" William replied where he reached down and opened a side pouch on his duffel bag and took out the UFO looking device that lit up. It was the anti-prior device he has had with him ever since Mark had been so kind as to reveal that such a thing existed. "With this I don't feel anything but my own emotions"

"So you have decided to suppress your new talents" it was a statement from the Doctor which caused a small frown to grown on Williams face

"They aren't talents… more like... curses" responded William

"Why do you think that?"

"Why do you think otherwise? I can't sleep without at least being a few meters from a person, I can't be within at least a dozen meters of a person before their emotions try and overtake me and I can't even get drunk to ignore them all cause my metabolism is so great" said William slowly raising his voice as he went through each point and slowly learning forward

"The bottom of a bottle isn't something that should ever be considered to stop your problems William" responded Dr. Keans in a soft voice.

"I'd probably still annoy me even if I was drunk, damn thing overtakes me when I'm asleep" said William as he now realized he was leaning to far forward and decided to lean back into his chair.

"So you don't like your powers now although they yet be helpful" said the Doctor

"Helpful. You do realize If this was on I could read your emotions?" asked William pointing to the anti-prior device on the table between the two "Ignoring the general annoyance of the emotions overtaking me it still is a massive breach in people's privacy"

"So now your concerned with others privacy instead of your own self interest"

"I'm not concerned with others privacy it is just a fact. If everyone around me knew I knew their current emotions they would stay away, whether it was on purpose or otherwise. I have a friend, Jordan, he's black and one time when we had a high school trip across France I could see it as clear as day. people didn't want to sit next to him they made sure that he was always in front of them, not everyone, but enough to tell. These people weren't racists they had a nice conversation with Jordan and a number of other black students but it was an unconscious reaction of treating him like he is a thief. I've seen it before and I even see it now, some of the people purposefully vacate the room whenever I enter, not blatant but enough to see" explained William the Doctor noticed his closed fists

"And you're not happy with them thinking your a freak" suggested Dr. Keans

"I know I'm a freak Doctor. A month ago I was a foot shorter and half my current weight. Now I can read that plaque" said William pointing to behind the Doctor where her desk was and behind her desk was a picture that showed her shaking hands with an old friend and though she couldn't even see that plaque at the moment she knew just under the picture were the words 'For a decade of helping children' "I can hear the man walking past your office right now" he added looking behind him to the door without turning his body

"How do you know its a man?"

"The gait, a man sort of stomps more than a woman" responded William "I can smell the turkey sandwich that you ate for lunch and if I concentrate I can hear your heart beating" bringing his head back to look directly at the Doctor "and based on how fast yours is going I'd say you are surprised"

"So you see your powers a hindrance for normal Human interactions and your greater senses and sharper mind grant you sort of powers even though the device is activated" this caused William to look at her in surprise

"Most people don't notice it, my ability for greater processing and to come up with different routes that others wouldn't ever consider" said William and it was true, like McKay half a decade earlier William had grown smarter and had the ability to recall nearly his entire life. A perfect eidetic memory going as far back as to his first memory he had before he was transformed.

"I have your file here William" smiled the Doctor holding up a file that had grown rather large this past few weeks and had the stamp of 'Top Secret SG/G' on it. That was one of the things William had no clue as to why it was top secret. Unlike the basic tiers of classified that everyone knew there were higher levels of classified beyond Top Secret and they were the SG designations from Kappa to Alpha. As for why William was designated Gamma level he had no clue, he had a clearance of Delta so even though he was designated Gamma he had yet to see another file besides his own that had a 'Top Secret SG/G' stamped on it, and more peculiar was that the 'secret' of him being an Ancient was an open one that everyone knew. "and I'd imagine that if I was more familiar with you before your transformation that I would've seen it. I'm sure your friend Mark Campbell had noticed it right?"

"Mark knew it the moment I returned and thought up a number of improvements to one of our small projects" smiled William "He still considers himself smarter to me because my transformation he calls is bull"

"I have heard of your small project, the F-302 flight suit. Correct?" asked Dr. Keans

"Yup the current one is just a minor improvement on those used by the pilots across most militaries. Completely useless in space making it impossible for pilots to eject and making the F-302s coffins. So we made a new flight suit that acts both as a space suit allowing ejection as well as having a transponder of sorts using tachyons allowing beaming from nearly double to regular distance" explained William

"And what started you on this path to make the new flight suit?"

William responded with a smile "I'm am certain you know. Major Karlem callsign Crater was one of our first friends when we were reassigned to Homeworld Command. Good guy had taken part in multiple fights and made quadruple ace in his 302, his last mission was against a Lucian Alliance base that was being used to launch an attack against Destiny. There wasn't a fight he was just left behind because the planet went up. Nothing the Hammond could do, couldn't get close enough in time, couldn't beam him out due to being too far and couldn't get close enough to beam him out. If he had on the new flight suit both 302s pilots could have been saved with an ejection and the new transponders"

"Nothing the Hammond could do when you came back. But now?" asked the Doctor drawing parallels that with his new intellect he perhaps found a way out of the situation

"No Doctor nothing the Hammond could do" responded William in an affirmative a bit to forcefully

"Tell me William what about the other known abilities that the Ancients had" said Dr. Keans

"Apart from telekinesis that I do have and the empathy that apparently was rare among them I'd imagine you are talking about the healing?" asked William and with a nod from the Doctor "Don't have it. I even had limited telekinesis so it isn't that surprising that I don't have the more prominent ability" finished William with a suspicious look on his face

"And how did you figure that out?"

"Is that why I'm here? Because I nicked myself to try and heal. It was a minor cut Doctor and healed up by the time I went to bed. Not even a scar" said William showing her his back hand

"Did you want there to be scars?"

William smiled and looked up and stretched "I'm not some depressed teenager doctor. It was the simplest and fastest way to figure out if I had that ability"

"Perhaps but I've heard Doctor Jem has broken his arm. Why not try with him?"

"I'm sure I would've if I had it but why complicate a simple test?"

"Why not bring in people who you would no doubt help in the beginning instead of only doing tests without others?"

"What are you getting at Doctor?" asked William in honest curiosity

"What I am getting at is that through this gift, and it is a gift, that you now have you have isolated yourself from everyone else and you see yourself as no longer Human even though you attempt to correct everyone when they say the truth to you. You are not Human you're an Ancient. But just because that is true doesn't mean you need to see yourself as something that needs to be kept at a distance from other than Humans. Teal'c had been among the SGC for years before he even had the chance to return to the Jaffa and he still didn't let the fact that he wasn't Human stop him from forming bonds with the other Humans around him" said Dr. Keans as it was her who had done a psychological profile on Teal'c when he first came to Earth and had done it numerous other times when he was apart of the SG-1.

"I am Human Doctor. I was born to two Humans I grew up with Humans, I am from the homeworld of Humanity and wouldn't trade this world for any others" stated William

"Tell me about your parents" said Dr. Keans switching topics

"My father was a professor at Oxford in the English department and my mother a grad student doing her PhD at Oxford where they met and got married and had me. Eventually when I was ten they moved back to Canada where my mother was originally from and that was about it" said William

"Your father a great advocate for the Mark Jahil Organization" said Dr. Keans mentioning the single Organization that marked Williams entire family from not being allowed knowledge of the Stargate. The Mark Jahil Organization is a group funded by mostly conspiracy nuts but the actual faces of the organization are people like Williams father, people who petition governments across the world to declassify everything no matter if it does harm. Named after a victim of one of the numerous people the CIA used without their permission in their efforts to make a working mind control procedure.

"So what of it?" asked William, he knew his father was strange in who he associated with.

"He like most people in the organization wishes for all of this" she said gesturing around herself to the base, and beyond "to be de-classified along with for militaries across the world to be a tenth of what they are now" she said mentioning a second one of Williams fathers ideas "Is that why you joined the airforce? A tale as old as Humanity the son spites his father and becomes the thing his father hates"

"I didn't join in spite of my father" Stated William forcefully

"So why did you join for armed forces? Your father and mother are both successful and could easily pay your tuition for any College or University. So it wasn't for higher learning. If you take the SGC out of the equation everyone knows the most advanced tech belongs to companies. So it wasn't for the ability to get your hands on advanced technologies. And I know that with your family that a sense of duty didn't drive you here like many others have"

"I joined because I wanted to. No other reason" stated William more forcefully

"And now you can no longer see your father, or mother, or siblings again right?" said the Doctor cutting straight to her point. With the gain in both height and weight brought along by the Ancient device and with his father having a known hatred toward classified knowledge Homeworld Command had decided that William could no longer see his family again as to explain it away would either require to talk about the Stargate or to come up with another classified program that will make it look like Canada and the USA were experimenting on Humans. So William could no longer see his family. Sure he could phone them and send emails but he can never look them in the eyes ever again, at least till disclosure and as much as William had been able to look into there wasn't any plans on disclosure in the works at all.

"Yes I'm stuck in this new existence without the comforting help of my family. It that what you wanted to hear Doctor?" nearly shouting was William with anger clearly shown on his face

"The new long existence" clarified the Doctor. With those words Williams anger disappeared and he hung his head low "I've read the files William, the knowledge of what exactly happened to you was brought to your attention a week ago. Then you came here and had been staying away from everyone including your assigned squad for SG training and had cut the Human part out of a very Human orientated experiment with your healing. No other person has been affected by the Ancients more than you have, even Dr. Jackson could see that and he lost nearly all his memories for an entire year after he was thrown out by the Ancients. And now here you are, someone so affected by them that you have already started cutting out any Human elements in your life and without your family are now stuck with a long life ahead of you"

"Its bullshit" said William his head still low

"It's not bullshit William, it is a proven fact. How long had the device expanded your lifespan. How long will you live before old age takes you?" asked Dr. Keans leaning to try and look at Williams face

"A thousand years" he said staring at the Doctor with sadness in his eyes "If I don't die or are killed I'll live to see the year three thousand. If I don't blow my brains out with a gun I'll live to see dozens of generations be born, live, and die of old age before I even look fifty. How I look now…" he said looking to his body "they told me I would look this way for the next two hundred years before I started to actually age. And that thousand years is only based on an Ancients lifespan... based on how healthy my body naturally keeps me I may yet live another two hundred years after that…"

"The year three thousand two hundred. No one could think of such a long life" said the Doctor ignoring the statement of William commiting suicide, hell she herself knew she would consider it when staring down the barrel of a millennia of life.

"Sadly I can…" said William which caused a raised eyebrow on Dr. Keans "You know that quote 'A single death is a tragedy a million deaths is a statistic'?" he asked and the Doctor nodded her head "Well that is true for Humans. With my new enhanced brain, it's a tragedy. I physically hurts whenever I think about the number of deaths that others would consider a statistic. And when I think of the thousand years I am going to live… It isn't unthinkable it is very much knowable and understandable for me. And I know that it doesn't matter now…"

"Tell me… who wrote this?" asked Dr. Keans taking out a single page of paper with text on it and handed it to William who looked at it and smiled weakly when he read the title 'The Purpose of Life'

"I did" he responded, it was a small project that couldn't even be called a project from his high school philosophy class. Everyone had to write up why they think they they are alive, others took a religious perspective and talked about numerous religions and dogmas across the world, others took a purely clinical scientific point of view in that the only reason was to pass along their genetics to the next generation and that was it. William had no clue as to how Dr. Keans found it.

"Can you read the last paragraph?" asked the Doctor

"In summary the purpose for why you are alive at this very moment is not the grand design of some higher power or the biological drive for reproduction but in fact is the only reason that truly matters. Your opinion, your opinion on what to live for is the purpose of your life, you figure out what matters at the moment, you figure out why you are alive at this very moment and use that to drive you forward in life and if that purpose becomes clouded or it becomes no longer applicable then you find another purpose for why you are alive. The purpose for why you live at this very moment is what you choose it to be not what others tell you or what society tells you"

"And why does that not apply now? What drove you before this was to help others. And now with the knowledge of the beings that threaten Earth and many worlds across multiple galaxies. Who are you to think that you can sit by and let them go on as you sit on at home safe on Earth while others defend you and help others?" asked the Doctor quoting William himself from his first psychological assessment when he learned about the Stargate and the true state of the galaxies.

"And now, now I see that that is impossible. There will always be danger threatening Earth there will always be those who are to weak to fight for themselves" said William "My ability to comprehend also comes with an ability to understand. Whether it will be aliens or Humans there will always be"

"And so there will always be a reason to go on living. You joined the armed forces because you knew it was the best way to help others. And now you have a thousand years of life ahead of you with a superhuman way to comprehend to help others and this" said the Doctor pointing to the anti-prior device "cuts you off from helping others. An inherent knowledge in how others are feeling at the moment will allow you to lift others up, an ability to know when they are down and when they are up will guide you to better decisions, you have the ability to help others both on a wider scale with the knowledge that Homeworld Command has access to and on the smaller scale with the ability to know when others are feeling down. But not when you hide away from your gifts, not when you cut out Humanity from your life. So what if you will see many die before your turn comes up, you will be able to see many come together and help each other. That is what you need to focus on, not how many are going to die but how many that are going to live, how many you are going to help and how many who are going to help you when you will need help"

William smiled weakly "So what even after all the good I will do there will always be bad. I see that and I'm sure even you will see it"

"That is the problem with that mind of yours, you think to big, so what if there will always be bad. The SGC ended the Goa'uld Dynasty that stretched back over five thousand years it had freed billions of slaves and has brought joy to billions of Humans and Jaffa, even if there is still slavery and murder there is still billions who are happy and free. And when we free the slaves they will be happy. And when we bring civilization to the galaxy and bring down murder rates there will be even more who are happy. And so on and so on, all you need to do is help. So what if it is just one person or a billion, they will still be greater than they were before you decided to help, their life will be changed for the better all because you decided to help" explained the Doctor

William had an inquisitive look and he slowly responded "I can't find any error in your logic…"

Dr. Keans smiled and was about to talk before sirens went off. "What's that one?" she inquired she knew there were multiple different sirens for different reasons. Such as a fire, biological hazard or more military ones, incoming, evacuate, and this being Area 51 there were even more specific ones such as known hostiles approaching system, unknowns approaching Earth as for this specific siren.

"That is known hostiles incoming to Earth" said William standing up "I need to report to the chair" ever since he became and Ancient he was on the list of those who were cleared to defend Earth with the Ancient weapons platform and so for action stations he was to report to the chair, and that was what he did as he ran out of the Doctor's office as Dr. Keans wrote at the bottom of her page.

 _"Recommend long term assignment offworld with Second Lieutenant Campbell for foreseeable future"_

* * *

 **Well there wasn't any major reason why I stopped writing but simple fatigue, as which usually happens during times when I write and post, it eventually turns into a job of sorts and drags on me and I don't want that for a fun hobby so it may happen again but at the moment I am in a groove so it will either be a couple months before it happens again or I may finish before it does...**


	9. Chapter 9

**Pentagon, Earth**

 **July 2010**

"I say again this is a complete and utter failure that nearly cost us one of the most important cities on the planet, I demand that we be given a more direct say in how our forces are deployed!" shouted someone or other, O'Neill didn't particularly care who was speaking because they all said the same thing only with different voices and different ways. Either way, it was the IOA wanting more power over the Stargate and its forces, still whoever this one guy was he left a pretty wide opening for rebuttal but O'Neill didn't want to make the man look like a fool in front of his colleges, it has been awhile since the SGC and IOA were at eachothers throats, at least… a couple of months since they nearly blew up the Destiny.

"You do have a direct say councilmen, you just need to go through the proper channels, you even have a phone line directly to your head of state or your military voice on the defense council" said O'Neill - he didn't bother letting his logic win out over getting one over the IOA councilmember and it seemed he did based on the number of coughs around the room that were poor attempts to hide their smiles and the glare he got from that specific member.

"And so what? Are we to leave the defense of this planet to people who let a nuke land directly on a world capital!? Who's next? Paris? London? Moscow!? Beijing!? Who is next to take the hit from your inadequate leadership general!?" that specific man shouted back, a bad move O'Neill noted, he let emotion cloud him and showed to the other members that he is susceptible to manipulation through his emotions. Plus he insulted O'Neill himself while that would have gone over fine a couple years ago, but now O'Neill knew that he was beyond reproach across every government based on what he did leading SG-1 and how his leadership and decisions turned out to be the best for Earth over the last couple of years.

"I admit they got one over on us, they appear to have some advanced hyperspace navigation programs that are decades ahead of anything the Goa'uld had as well as the perfected Naquadria energized bombs. The weapon was determined to be five megatons enough to wipe out washington state and leave radioactive fallout across half of nearby states" said O'Neill drawing wide eyes across the room, the whole scope of the bomb wasn't fully figured out till a few minutes before this meeting.

"Thankfully they haven't fully figured out how to make nukes so we were saved from having to fix a hole in the eastern United States" joked O'Neill, he tried to dissuade the negative atmosphere at learning that their enemies had such powerful bombs. "What we also have figured out was who was behind this attack and are prepared to retaliate with the Victory and Kursk, a plan has been drawn up by one of our newer tacticians on retaliation and how to completely remove any and all naquadria in Lucian Alliance hands as well as multiple shipyards across the galaxy"

"I hope that this doesn't involve throwing planet ending asteroids like the last plan?" asked the IOA member from Switzerland and O'Neill flinched, he was really fine with bombarding planets as long as they are not their planets but after that particular mission the IOA wasn't really happy when the full picture of what occurred was brought before them. Sure there was quite a large mess but that was one of the largest shipyards in operation by the Alliance. Then again Alliance shipyards are run on slaves…

"Well... admittedly it is the same tactician" responded O'Neill which resulted in outrages and some groans around the table "But since last time and this bodys change of policy on planetary bombardment it won't happen again unless we approve it, so we are all good right?"

"That's not the problem General we are dealing with a… man?" asked the IOA member and with a nod from O'Neill he went forward "A man who ignores basic decency"

"Basic decency? We are at war with these people councilman"

"A war where we have no rules. The outer space treaty stops half of us from putting weapons in space and yet we still do it. We have been fighting a war that has no precedent and sooner or later we will cross a line that we will be judged for and this tactician has shown himself to be the possible straw that broke the camel's back"

"Well ignoring camels for a moment this tactician has brought forth numerous improvements and shown new doctrine that for over five years and over a dozen others who are paid to do this haven't shown an inkling of the things this man has shown he can do and do repeatedly" responded O'Neill

"With liberal use of asteroid rammings"

"With using advanced tech he only recently learned about and with new equipment that has no parallel available outside Homeworld Command" responded O'Neill

"Gentlemen let us ignore the past and focus on the future. This retaliation you alluded to does it require our specific approval?" asked Mr. Strom

"No nothing that this body has specifically asked for or put into the rules" responded O'Neill and after a second pause "However there is a few additions that were suggested that could go a long way in our multiple wars as well as increasing our ties with longstanding allies"

"Such as?"

"Advancing our allies to current level of civilian tech and perhaps a few more advancements in power production and manufacturing from the Asgard database"

And at that the room went silent everyone knows why they never give out modern tech to any allies. It is IOA's attempt to keep Earth at the peak in terms of technology when compared with the rest of the Galaxy. Of course if wouldn't have mattered due to multiple planets and even species that are greater than Earth such as the Tollans, Hebridan, and even the Reetou however since the Ori were able to carry there crusade among the stars in the Milky way for a little over a year there are only ashes where once great cities lay.

"I thought we talked about this already?" asked Mr. Strom

"Well we talked about this three years ago and there was a genocidal crusade between then and now councilor. Earth so far as we can tell is the largest source of advanced technology in the galaxy now that most other civilizations have fallen to the Ori and if we were to advance other ally human worlds we could possibly get these ally worlds to make some of our less important tech without relying on Earth based companies" said O'Neill

"And what we will be relying on planets with no real connection to Earth and no prerogative to help defend Earth?"

"Langara, Edora, Tagrea, and Pangar. These four have been the closest and largest trading partners since we opened up the Stargate and we have been advancing them by decades in the few short years we've known them. Their people are the most open to sudden technological change and they are also very aware that it is the people of Earth who have been helping in their changed lives" Said O'Neill quoting from the proposal

"Yes but…" and so began two grueling hours of back and forth that O'Neill actually didn't have to do much but quote from the proposal as for nearly every reasonable point brought up by the councilmen of IOA there was an even greater counterpoints from the proposal. Really he would've loved to have this guy on the council as many of the counterpoints were so blatantly obvious that it made the councilmen seem dim by comparison. Yet this room was filled with politicians and generals from across the planet, not the best place to have a second lieutenant. Either way after two hours it still ending in them all agreeing to disagree which was a pain for O'Neill, another wasted meeting.

* * *

 **HMS Victory** **, Earth Orbit**

 **Same Time**

William wasn't sure why he was being transferred to the Victory, while Canada was technically in the Commonwealth it kinda didn't make sense, he knew there was a significant lineup of scientists waiting to pounce on him and realistically he is learning entire fields of study in days with his access to the Asgard database. Now he is currently setting up his room where there is five others with him, the barracks on the Victory are different than the Hammond there are now massive bathrooms where the regular bathrooms on the Hammond would service a couple dozen there are now four massive bathrooms that service the entire two hundred man crew. And turning around in his new quarters he can see the ol standby for the British armed forces, a tea kettle.

"2nd-Lt Cole report to the bridge" came the Chief over Williams earpiece, another thing about the Victory that is different than the Hammond the number of officers on the bridge are greater in number, there's the weapons, communications, sensors, Chief for the pilots, and Sergeant for the crew and marine contingent. It seems that British air force is taking a page out of their navy for this one instead of having two officers be the only people that could relay orders. These thoughts and others filled Williams head as he arrived on the bridge to meet General Kassandra James, it seems someone in the British airforce had decided to pull rank a bit and got herself placed as the commander of the UK's first spaceship.

"Ma'am" offering a crisp salute was William when he arrived behind the diminutive woman who was by the side of the bridge speaking with the Chief. Turning around William got the first good look at the woman, in her early fifties yet by no means looking that old the brown haired woman had sharp green eyes that roved over William making him feel small before her gaze even though he was technically over a foot taller than her. He even knew that she was not intimidated by his large form at all, the emotions coming off her easily matched her inquisitive eyes.

"So your the Lieutenant who came up with the war plan" said the General in a soft voice that promised to raise if he didn't do what she said when she said it.

"Yes Ma'am" replied William, he was the man with the plan, well at least this plan.

"And the action over Bastets palace correct?"

"That to Ma'am"

"Well it appears we are now following your plans for this campaign Lieutenant anything that I should fully be aware of?"

After the near detonation of a massive bomb in the Pentagon, William as well as others he figured, were contacted and told to immediately begin drafting offensive measures against Masim and his clan, while most of Earth's spies are spread among the more important Lucian Warlords there is still quite a bit of info concerning Masim and his holdings, such as him having half a dozen shipyards for the non-capital ships of the Goa'uld and how there is a single planet where he has most of his logistical people stationed. Which is why at this moment there is a team of SAS on the Victory as well as a team of Spetsnaz on the Kursk. With both ships loaded up a month long campaign will begin with the General incharge.

"There is still quite a large hole in the intel on Masims palace ma'am. We could be walking into a small outpost or a stronghold equal to Goa'uld" responded William, he knew there wasn't that large of a chance but who knows these are paranoid people there dealing with.

"Well what do you suggest we do then?"

"The SAS and Spetsnaz had proven themselves time and again to be up to any challenge ma'am and if I wasn't totally confident in this appropriate force I wouldn't have suggested it"

"That's good to hear Lt, I'd hate to lose any men on our first military action, lest we become a second Sun Tzu" responded the General referring to the Sun Tzu's reputation as something of a bad luck charm, her cheeky smile showed it was a joke that was shared with the Chief behind her that William could see and possibly with the other Officers that heard her around him based on the feelings coming off them.

"Yes ma'am, it does appear to becoming something of a theme around Area 51 and the SGC" he responded.

"So it is…"

"Ma'am we have been given the go by Command, the Kursk responds and the Colonel asks whether you wish to address the fleet before we begin"

"Give me the fleet, get to your station Lt" said General as she walked with powerful strides to her seat. William on his part walked to the back of the bridge, apparently the Brits have been calling it the Command Table, really it was a holographic interface that was connected to every sensor the ship had and could be configured to whatever the Captain wished, for the American ships apparently it constantly showed the local space with stars and gates marked. For the Victory they give the prerogative to who ever was stationed there, as in it was William and the Sergeant.

"Attention all Homeworld forces" the General began, her voice coming over the loudspeakers across the ship as well as - William surmised - 50 kilometers to the port where the Kursk sat waiting to unleash it powerful arsenal "The Lucians think that they can attack us with impunity, they think they can come to Earth and destroy our homes and icons without retaliation. Well we will soon disabuse them of that notion. Together our two ships have some of the most powerful nuclear weapons in existence, together our two ships have some of the most powerful shields known to this corner of the Universe, we'll show the Lucian Alliance that Earth had not stopped after bringing the Goa'uld down and Ori to heel. We will show the galaxy that Earth is and will continue to be the dominant superpower of the Galaxy for the foreseeable future. Helmsmen set course for P5D G3F and prepare for combat, you have three hours"

With a nod to the communications the speech was stopped and she looked to her crew as both the Kursk and Victory jumped together. "You have two hours to do with what you please then I want us prepared before we get close to the planet" With that she walked out, probably to go to her dayroom, another addition that the British air force had taken from their navy, the Captain gets her own office of sorts. Strangely enough William noted that the General has set the Victory's and Kursk's hyperspace engines as full max instead of cruise, it would normally take four hours to get to the planet but it seemed the General wanted to retaliate fast.

As for William he was standing next to the Sergeant not wanting to move a muscle near him, he knew that to rangle marines it takes a special kind of hardass and did not want to even have the Sergeant notice him. "So Lieutenant" came his gravelly voice, ' _goddammit'_

"Yes sir" William responded

"Why don't you take the first spin of the Command Table and I'll see if it's up to snuff for when I return"

"Yes sir"

"Good" and with that he walked out of the bridge, possibly to go eat, it was technically noon

It was three hours later when the two Earth ships were minutes from dropping out that the first sensor pings came back. As a constant in warfare no matter if it is between two medieval kingdoms or mighty star empires the leg up goes to the side with the most reliable intel on the other, the Asgard knew this and as such spent decades coming up with the most sophisticated sensors and processing software, one of these newer feats was installed on the new Daedalus class ships. Goa'uld ships, or really any ship with artificial gravity always had a 'leak' of sorts onto the local spacetime, one can't expect to have the effects of an entire planet packed into each deck of a ship without some sort of side effect on the local spacetime, usually this 'leak' stopped a few hundred meters out of the ship if they were primitive gravity plates - such as the ones the Goa'uld use - or a few feet if they were as advanced as the Asgard. Still the 'leaks' were enough for the Asgard to recognize them based on their effects on subspace, which the Victory and Kursk were currently flying through.

"Nearly perfectly on the dot with what was expected" stated Colonel Drugo the Russian in command of the Kursk, he was currently a hologram at the front of the bridge standing with the General looking at the monitors above them, that showed the estimated force.

"Yup we were expecting at least one more Ha'tak and three less Al'kesh, looks like this is a one up for Earth intel" responded the General

"If I remember the intel correctly it mostly said 'we have no clue'"

"Is that so… Lieutenant" said the General looking behind her to where William was standing at the Command Table

"Ma'am, force estimate was based on what Masim had available in terms of shipyards and resources as well as the size of his territory and the importance of this particular planet" responded William

"Your estimate I guess?" she asked

"Yes ma'am along with intel officers in the CIA"

"Well I'll be damned, that is some good estimation" said the Colonel

"Well we have fifteen minutes to plan our initial foray, suggestions Colonel?" asked General looking at the estimated force dispersion.

"Oh I have a few ideas my good General…" a wicked smile spread across the Colonels face

In the many years of the Goa'uld dominance of the galaxy there are many standards that they have adopted to make war more reasonable between them and to keep their ships in top shape. Some of these standards are not having and iris or something similar on their planets, not throwing asteroids at each other, and having shields at a standard five percent when just sitting over a planet with no known hostiles inbound. With a shield at five percent its normal output against shields that were hundreds if not thousands of years ahead of them at their full output there really was no competition, so when a hyperspace window opened right above a Ha'tak that seemed to be at the center of the formation it was somewhat of a startle. When an Earth ship came out of that hyperspace window with its shields raised it was a scare. When said Earth ship slammed into the Ha'tak at speeds most would consider crazy it was down right terrifying.

About a thousand kilometers from the defending force the Victory also came out of hyperspace.

"We are cleared" came the sensors officer

"Seems the Russians got the first kill, lets make sure they don't show us up" said the General noticing the wreckage of the Ha'tak slowly drifting apart, behind the General William was quite shocked, sure he knew that the Kursk would survive with only a minor drop in shields but it seems that the Ha'tak had also survived as best as it could, in that, there was no explosion when its reactor went. A quick gesture showing the battlefield in front of him brought up the image of the dispersing debris that was once a Ha'tak, a query to the system showed that it seems the Kursk had angled exactly right to have their shields hit every reactor on the Ha'tak and incinerate them before they exploded, a back out of focusing on the single Ha'tak wreck showed the scale of the entire battle. Seven normal Ha'tak raising shields to full power and preparing weapons, twenty Al'kesh coming out of their stupor of seeing a Ha'tak being rammed to death, and a number of Death gliders launching a few at a time from the Ha'tak.

The Command Table had what William figured was what a Command Table should have displayed, the entire local space where the battle was taking place, both the Kurks and Victory's status on display on the table instead of in the air as a hologram, and to the back of the table was an image layout of the Victory with lifesign detectors showing every crew member in their white colour, strangely it showed William as blue. A quick query when setting it up showed that the lifesign detectors were taken from Atlantis which showed the race, white was Human while blue was Ancient.

"Spetsnaz and SAS away, 302s launching" said the Chief

"I want an even spread on targets 3, 4, and 5 with APBs, tell the pilots they are to focus on Al'kesh and Gliders and I want weapons to whenever possible beam mark Ⅸs where they see targets of opportunity" a chorus of 'Aye ma'am's followed and the first battle for the Victory had begun.

And William got to work, he wasn't on the bridge just to watch, when the General had laid out her attack plans ten minutes earlier the weapons officer had told him that since he will be focused on the APBs and railguns he wanted William to find these 'targets of opportunity' and relay him the coordinates for beam out and that was what William had begun to do, using gestures to rotate the hologram of the battle area William found his first target as a fleeing Ha'tak, it seems the Kursk had given it a full barrage before switching targets, so Willum quickly selected the space just above its weakened shields before sending the coordinates to the weapon officers station and a second later the Victory was down one mark Ⅸ and had her first Ha'tak kill, the second came fifteen seconds later when a full APB barrage brought down target 4.

"302s are now outnumbered ma'am" stated the Chief at his station at the front of the bridge

"Bring us around we can give them cover" she responded, still in that soft voice but with more of a commanding tone than before.

William followed the Victory as she maneuvered to the center of the massive fighter engagement, at the beginning of the battle the 302s from the Kursk and Victory had carefully herded all the Gliders and Al'kesh into a large air engagement, with the Gliders attempting to take down the 302s and Al'kesh attempting to leave the zone but any who got too close to an unseen boundary were quickly targeted with missiles. William noted the fall in APBs firing as the weapons officer focused on taking out gliders with the railguns and Al'kesh with missiles, he also noticed the Kursk taking out its second kill after its rather interesting entrance, she also did a side swipe of the fighter battle throwing a few railgun rounds and missiles for good measure before returning to the Ha'tak, a quick look showed her shields down to seventy percent another few hits and the bleed through would begin.

William couldn't really pick out a place for a mark Ⅸ in the middle of the battle due to the dogfighting happening but he could soften up the Kursk's opponents. Seeing she was headed toward a Ha'tak below them William selected just outside the Ha'taks shields directly opposite of the vector the Kursk is approaching, a second later and the Ha'tak had lost a significant fraction of its shields. William winced at the Kursks response, seems whoever aboard over there wasn't expecting the Ha'tak to jump toward them a few meters instead of running the other way as it was attempting to do. They quickly abandoned their dive only able to fire two shots of the APB and a few railgun rounds. But with shields weekend, it was enough and the Kursk got its third kill.

With the numbers evening out a group of Al'kesh broke off from bombarding the Victory and headed for the Kursk who was coming around to take another run at the remaining two Ha'tak. It seems that either the Chief didn't care to send a flight of fighters or figured that the Kursk would be fine with the seven Al'kesh. William didn't want to find out and after they left the zone he targeted the center of the formation, a mark Ⅸ later and they were out of shields or nearly there and decided to not go after the Kursk.

"SAS from the surface, they got the info dump and requesting beam out! Spetsnaz are as well " shouted the comms officer, well that was unexpected William figure with the amount of nukes the Victory is throwing around no comms would be working.

"Why us?" asked the General

"Kursk can't beam through her shields with the fire she is taking"

"We will sort it out later bring them back aboard, helm lets stop moving around"

William wanted to ask why to stop but he figured it out a moment later when two 302s landed and he noticed most of the Al'kesh who were firing on the Victory were fleeing or had a number of missile trailing them. With two more 302s it appeared the birds with low ammo were coming back aboard. A look at the Kursk showed their shields down to 40% and a few of their railguns no longer responded. He brought up an image of the Kursk - after noting it fourth kill - and saw the scorch marks due to the bleed thru of the shields and noticed many of the railguns were no longer there.

After the sixth 302 landed the General said "Get us moving I want that last kill"

"Ha'tak has jumped to hyperspace ma'am" reported the sensors officer

"Ah damn!" she said showing more emotion than he had seen come from her.

"Gliders are fleeing as well should we follow?" asked the Chief

"No let them go bring our birds back, what's our status?" she said aloud as the sound off came back, first was the man next to William

"We had a number of electrical fires across the spine of the ship, had those sorted and only a few minor burns and bruises, all in medical getting treated" he said aloud and one of Williams eyebrow raised, usually a fire was a big enough danger they would at least tell the commander of the ship, but it appeared the Brits had a different idea of danger.

"We have three railguns non responding, diagnostics think its an electrical overload, a reset and q check of the wiring and they should be back on" said Weapons

"Shields are down to fifty percent, have some singes on the under belly and nothing else of note" said Sensors

"We lost seven birds, four ours, three Russian. We emergency beamed ten pilots, gotta return five back to the Russians and their Spetsnaz" said the Chief

"Russians report two railguns completely gone and a few singes as well, overall they are good"

"Alright collect our tech and birds then retreat to the fall back point, Second-Lieutenant Cole to my ready room please" said the General as she walked out, feeling like he was a condemned man walking to the noose William followed her.

* * *

 **Area 51, Earth**

 **Sametime…**

Mitchell was quite interested in why Daniel was back at Area 51, after the mess that was Cole's SG training Mitchell decided it was best to not go off world till after training. Really it was all Kavanagh's fault but best be safe than sorry. Daniel was suppose to be in Washington getting ready a proposal to the IOA for the next month but now he was back here for some reason, he didn't know. After stealing a conference room overlooking the Sun Tzu Mitchell, Vala, and Hailey were waiting for Daniel to show up. Vala in particular was looking at the Sun Tzu and the men working on it.

"I really do see the appeal. Looks much better than the Prometheus" she said

"Why are you just saying this now?" asked Mitchell, this wasn't the first Daedalus she had seen, let alone the tenth.

"I haven't had much time to look at one of your ships from the outside yet, only the inside" she responded

"Like when you attempted to steal the Prometheus to sell to a spaceship equivalent of a chop shop" pointed out Hailey

"Yes, ah good times"

"Not really for me" said Daniel as he entered and sat down

"Daniel! Have you come to see me?" smiles Vala

"Uhhh… No" he said sorting out the papers he had spread around the table ignoring the pout from Vala

"What you doing back here? Aren't you supposed to be in Washington?" asked Mitchell

"Yes but after the whole fiasco with the Pentagon I figured I'd give them time to rebuild the building"

"So we gonna go back to being SG-1?" asked Mitchell, he was really hopeful one doesn't want to be stuck as SG trainer for the long time it will take them to rebuild the Pentagon.

"No, I'm currently accessing the Asgard Database looking into their more recent history about the war with the replicators" said Daniel

"For?"

"Making sure that the replicators are truly gone" responded Daniel which caused a grim look to come over Mitchells face

"You think there still out there?"

"Well no… maybe. It's hard to tell. I have a number of pages through different points in Asgard history that says the Replicator War ended at a certain date, but then I find that paper again but dated again a few hundred years down the line"

"Makes sense" said Hailey and when everyone looked at her she explained "Replicators can rebuild from only a single bug form. The Asgard, I'm sure, had hundreds of planets and thousands of outposts. If a single one of them had a replicator bug then they were never truly gone and after a few hundred years of rebuilding their numbers the war began again"

"Well that isn't a very happy thought" said Vala

"Down-right terrifying to be honest" added Mitchell

"Right, so at the moment I'm trying to figure out if ever Heliopolis ever had fallen, however I'm not finding anything referencing it and the Replicator War together"

"That's good right? It could still be fine untouched by the Replicators"

"That or it was abandoned or destroyed years before the Replicator Wars" countered Hailey

"The Alliance was effectively dissolved when the plague hit the Milky way a million or so years ago, and the Replicator Wars started four thousand years ago, so it probably was abandoned" said Daniel

"Right I forgot why we call them Ancients…" said Mitchell

"So now what?"

"Now we figure out the last entry with Heliopolis mentioned and find out how long it's been and if it was destroyed. Hopefully we can convince the IOA to send an expedition" said Daniel

"The last expedition brought the Wraith, I'd highly doubt they would like it if we brought the Replicators" stated Vala

"Which is why we also find any notes on how the Asgard wiped out the Replicators before they committed race suicide"


	10. Chapter 10

**HMS Victory, Deep Space**

 **July 2010**

The mission was a success, from all the known variables and all possible outcomes when coming up with the assault on Marim's homeworld it was a real win. _Yet it doesn't feel like it_ thought General James. She was waiting in her ready room just after the Victory and Kursk dropped out of Hyperspace, no where near Earth, actually in the opposite direction from where their battle took place. Apparently this campaign will last another thirty days and she had two ships she had to keep in the best possible shape during those thirty days, no shipyard or repair facilities of any kind. The first battle and both of her ships were now more damaged than the Apollo or Daedalus had been when they were going up against Auroras. _This is just ridiculous_ , she figured with this damage she could go two maybe three more engagements before they had to return to a shipyard. With a plan written by a twenty one year old lieutenant had stated that they should be completely fine by the end of it. A twenty one year old that has knocked on her door.

"Enter" she responded, _calm and in control_ she steadied her face and mind, she knew what happened to the poor bastard, stuck with abilities he didn't ask for and made it impossible for him to see his parents face to face for the next couple of years. She knew how to school her features and use her sing-song voice that unnerved some of the most hardened pilots she had to deal with when she first joined up and her rise through the ranks. Now though… now she had to keep her emotions in check when dealing with this lieutenant who just walked in, six foot eleven with a build that put most people to shame. She heard he grew ten inches when he was hit with whatever the hell he was hit with and wasn't as well built as he was now. Another aspect that made her mask nearly slip - face and mind - he was intimidating, and she stared down marines that had been through hell and back, generals and admirals that had tendencies to sentence those they don't like to some of the worst fighting areas of the globe, all without really a care in the world or a slip of the mask she used now she needed that mask to extend to her mind as well.

"Ma'am" he said in a voice that didn't correspond to his body, mainly it wasn't the voice of God.

"Lieutenant I had just finished reviewing the entirety of our damages" she said and saw a small wince on his face, she knew it wasn't her as all she really felt was a bit disappointed, well that was what she willed herself to feel, she really hoped that was what he heard? Saw? Felt? She had no clue as to how his new empath abilities worked and played it by ear mostly. "And I am concerned that we may have to return to the shipyards at either the Beta site or Earth if this battle damage were to pile up if we are to expect such battles like this last one"

"Ma'am this was the largest engagement that we will have for the Campaign it was needed for the information gathering and based on where Masim either gets his naquadriah and…"

"And where his forces are dispersed we will begin choosing our favorable engagements about Masim. But I'm not talking about the Masim battles I am concerned about the four Shipyards we will be destroying in according to your plan twenty three hours" she said keeping her voice even and mind as blank as she could, really this was a pain.

"The Shipyards are expected to have five Ha'taks spread between them and five dozen Al'kesh

Ma'am" another immediate answer, it was kinda freaky that he had answers the questions the second after she finished talking, most people would need to think at least a couple seconds and she had become great at reading faces, his remained a stone, no thinking pose, no doubt behind those eyes. Wish she could say the same.

"And numerous weapon installations equal to the power of a Ha'tak, we can't face that kind of fire power" she responded, they really could but the damage would be to immense and she hated the thought of losing any more men.

"Weapon installations that will ignore us as long as we transmit the right codes taken from the data we ripped from Masim's homeworld" he said and she was honestly surprised, so much so that is showed on her mask, that was something that wasn't in the proposal

"That wasn't in the proposal"

"We were unsure if that was how the weapon installations worked that way, we got no intel on them besides the fact that they fire immediately on the Free Jaffa Nation Ha'taks whenever they exit hyperspace in range, no time for confirmation, no real warm up cycle, immediate fire. After we ripped the data I've been going over it and have confirmed intels suspicions and have the correct codes to transmit. To them we are just another Lucian ship even if we look nothing like it." he explained and damn if he wasn't assuring her.

"Wait when did you read through the data?" she asked, it was not even thirty minutes since the last Ha'tak exited the battle, no way he found the Data in the ship computer and went through terabytes of it.

"The new Daedalus vessels have the same search algorithms used in the Asgard Core all I needed to do was ask and it found it for me. It really is all about asking the right questions with those algorithms" and the bastard also knew more about her ship than she did… well I guess he would according to her old wingmate on the defense council they found him based on a paper he wrote on spaceships. Nerds like him were actually aplenty in the armed forces, they had to do something between missions and sleep with no internet connection most of the time and no library in hundreds of miles, well billions in their case.

"Very well, so we set up our comms to transmit the signal and all we need to deal with is Ha'taks in orbit?"

"Yes Ma'am" And again the bastard was really assuring her of the upcoming battles, not through manipulating her emotions that he figured he would do - with those new powers of his she imagine it wouldn't be to hard - but with the cold logic and planing that she could appreciate and understand. Perhaps that's just him? Or maybe it's what he's become… she didn't know but at the moment the big wigs figure he is no longer a security risk and allowed him off Earth. Still doesn't mean the Sergeant won't be monitoring him and even then the wave field generators that are a part of the anti-boarding suite on the new Daedalus ships are still there, even he doesn't know the generators can act as anti-prior devices.

"Very well give this to Comms and he'll distribute the codes to the Kursk" Who was currently sitting a few kilometers below them and either repairing their damaged railguns or scraping them. Well not really, the ships of Earth's growing fleet don't have a way to repair damage on the outside of the ship while their still in space and have to wait for a berth to open up for true repair. The Kursk was just rewiring electric cables and ejecting the railgun placements that may cause a chain reaction if they were to be any more damaged.

"Dismissed" and with a crisp salute the Ancient that will live to see her great grandchildren's great grandchildren die of old age left her ready room - making her feel so young yet so old at the same time, strange that he has that effect on people, or so she has heard. Flicking her hand across the computer in front of her she called up the comms officer.

"Comms"

"Give me a connection to Colonel Drugo, private line, please"

"Yes Ma'am" After a few seconds a thick accented Russian came over the line.

"General you wished for this to be private give me a moment to get to my ready room" she can almost hear the smile on his face. It appears the man hadn't let a loss of some of his pilots dampen his mood. After being able to ram a ship to death the Russian must have been smiling like a mad man the entire engagement she is less so. She knew that even with full shields a Ha'tak wouldn't stand up to the Asgard shields and new power generators of the Kursk but she still felt it was a bad idea which was why there were a number of contingencies depending on the state of the Kursk's shields the moment after the Ha'tak died. A ridiculous idea but she was forced to accept some of the Russians eccentricities as they were her subordinates during this campaign. Some think there is a wall between politics and military but the military has plenty of politics themselves, mostly confined to the higher ranks but politics nonetheless.

"I am here General, what do you wish to discuss?" his smile seems to still be there if her hearing was correct

"I finished discussing our predicament with our resident tactician" a scoff followed while she wanted to defend her crewmember she was thinking of doing the same thing when she heard the tactician was a twenty-one year old airman from Canada of all places. "And he has assured me that we'll be fine in the upcoming battles, There a codes being transmitted to your ship now that will make us appear a friendlies to the weapon installations on the shipyards we will be hitting"

"Very well anything else this tactician has told us that may be of use?" the Colonel seemed to be honest about that one and she could appreciate that he doesn't discount his ideas even if he is young.

"Not really, he may have a handle on the macro but doesn't seem to be able to think as well during the thick of it"

"Yup. You know he beamed a MarkⅨ right on the other side of a Ha'tak I was charging toward?" she winced, that was something she didn't see and with it only being a half hour since the battle she hasn't watched it over yet. It appears another thing that the kid still had to learn, when others are that focused you leave them be unless it compromises them, guess that proves he hasn't been in combat before.

"I think I don't want to be sticking around to long in case there is some override and they can get those weapons shooting at us. So we will be doing hit and runs, I need to know if your crew is ready for fast MIRV deployment" The original plan didn't call for radiating entire continents and plunging planets into nuclear winter so the MIRVs that the Kursk is carrying are the more tactical kind, non-nuclear. The plan called for five MIRVs one for each shipyard but the Kursk still carried its entire ten compliment and it usually took thirty minutes to prepare a deployment from their storage.

"We've been drilling those the past week and we are in acceptable ranges" responded the Colonel. Acceptable meaning ten minutes, not good for a hit and run but good enough for her plan. The original plan called for at least a day between attacks but with the codes she wasn't willing to bet that Masim will take his time in changing those out. So her idea was simple, take them all out as fast as possible, all she needed to know was if their hyperdrive can take that sort of punishment, dropping in and out so quickly. The Shipyards are all in an area of space a little over five thousand lightyears in radius so it will take less than an hour to get from one side to the other and with five shipyards to hit it will be one hell of a stress test.

"Alright we will be fast reloading and jumping from one shipyard to the other, sequentially. We will have to keep our 302s as we won't be there for any longer than we will be but we need to be coming in at the same vector. You'll deploy while the Victory covers you and we take out as much as we can till we confirm destruction of targets"

"What about in terms of Alpha and Beta targets?" asked the Colonel. At each Shipyard the Lucians got smart - well smarter than the Goa'uld before them - usually the Naquadah for construction is placed next to the soon to be ship, this included both construction grade Naquadah (the stable kind) and weapons grade Naquadah (the explody kind). Now the Lucians store their weapons grade at a vault far away from their site before its needed, these sites are the Beta targets but either way the main problem is the actual shipyards and those needed to be taken down.

"A majority of Alpha targets need to be taken out if not then we fight till we clear the air and send in the 302s to bomb the place" she responded as the Daedalus class ships didn't actually have a way to bomb a planet from orbit, APBs were just a no-no as Plasma never really reacted well with an atmosphere especially the weird Plasma the APBs put out. The railguns aren't precise enough and the missiles were meant for air-to-air kills and not air-to-ground, let alone orbit-to-ground. "I'll be the one to call it"

"Very well, so this might be either an amazingly good idea or we wreck our engines and can't jump above a planet that is shooting at us" He wasn't wrong the General noted as there wasn't any precedent for this type of flying. At least with Earthships, well atleast with the more stable Daedalus class ships. When the Prometheus entered and exited hyperspace quickly their core blew up and they were stranded. She knew the Prometheus was little more than a hunk of metal with as much alien tech the Americans could slap onto it and it was Goa'uld tech and not the greater Asgard technology, she used that reasoning in how this isn't a bad idea, it was kind of helping. Kind of.

* * *

"Two Ha'tak this time General" He said, the Colonel wasn't happy, his crew was being overworked and he couldn't say a damn thing to the General ' _we need to be seen playing ball with the Americans'_ General Gregori said yet these are the Brits and yet he was suppose to be listening to the woman's every word like it came from the Bible. He wasn't a religious man but that doesn't mean he would use such a piss poor excuse in front of the General not if he liked his neck unwringed. Three shipyards down, all Alpha and most Beta targets destroyed at both as well as their resident Ha'tak and over a dozen Al'kesh at each. He lost another two railgun platforms and at the moment his men had no idea whether it was a permanent thing or a damaged electrical wire and he didn't have the time to send out the repair teams to check as they were helping with loading the MIRVs. He was just realizing now that the loading of the MIRV was a costly endeavour in terms of muscle work and he now had the repair team swapping out with the normal weapons specialists. At the moment he was sitting down with the General woman on comms ten minutes out of the next shipyard, where there were two Ha'tak present. At least according to the Asgard sensors he had no clue how they worked and Asgard algorithms he had no idea what it looked like, he had seen the algorithms used during Hyperspace travel and would rather not repeating that mistake again.

"Indeed but we stick to plan, and focus on the one the Victory is closest to when we exit hyperspace" she said, again centered on her ship, he was happy that she was willing to do a give and take with him. He didn't believe a single iota that she thought his ramming idea was a brilliant strategy, yet it cost the defenders nearly a whole ten seconds time to get through two thirds of an APB charge cycle.

Well it does seem like he is getting the better of it now that he thought about it, getting to ram the bastard Lucians down and he didn't have that freak on board his ship. Personally if he knew someone had access to his emotions he would've shot it at first sight. If that kid had been on his ship he would've demanded the suppression generators to anti-prior mode all the damn time. He knew he could've worked around them in time, as he was taught by his father after coming home from Afghanistan, ever weapon had a weakness, every armour had a chink, every man an opening to exploit. Except maybe this Woman didn't, he had talked with her a number of times and yet he still couldn't get an inkling of what she was really feeling. She'd make an amazing politician, he mused.

"Coming out of Hyperspace in ten seconds" said his pilot, they had learned what was better after reviewing what the Americans were doing with their ships, slightly crazy really, they had two people in command of basically the whole ship, where as he has a pilot, two gunners, a flight officer, and a Sergeant. Much better layout than the Americans. A drop and massive decel of exiting hyperspace later and.

"Target the nearest Ha'tak to the Victory and deploy the MIRV" he said "target forward railguns on the Gliders" as there were Gliders on patrols around the small fleet, that was worrying. The Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for the Lucians were usually to keep their Gliders onboard the Ha'tak before launching when a threat is confirmed. That was bad news, the next shipyard may have fixed their weapons installations by the time they get there. A small shake of his head cleared those thoughts as the first Ha'tak went down, due to both barrages from the Victory and Kursk, fully powered shields he noted. The second Ha'tak realizing it was a bad idea being in front of the Victory and Kursk began rising above them and bringing their more powerful surface bombardment weapons to bear. Giving the MIRV a clean corridor to the shipyards below. These battles were stationary ones where they shot down Gliders heading for the MIRV and probably ruining some poor bastards day down below with their missed shots. Gravity, as ever was a cruel mistress.

Now above them and maneuvering like a mad man the Ha'tak, it had relatively free rein. Their APBs took a few second to reach it at these ranges and it had plenty of time to move around them, only glancing blows, with the Victory only able to bring two of her APBs on it as the other two on Daedalus class ships only had a forward and down firing arc instead of the larger arc the two forward emplacements had. As for the Kursk, he used his APBs to shoot down Al'kesh that got to close and railguns to take out the gliders while watching the numbers tick down on a monitor above the bridge window - time till the MIRV missiles connected. One minute.

A shook brought him out of staring at it and back to the monitor to its left showing the current battlefield, it seems a wing of five Al'kesh got a good hit in on them. "full missile launch, safeties off" time to repay that hit as all sixteen of the VLS missile tubes opened up and missiles came out and shot toward the offending Al'kesh, three missiles were shot down before the others hit. Two to bring down an Al'kesh shield and a third to kill it outright. With four down a the fifth losing shields rapidly due to a number of railgun platforms it was looking good. Forty seconds.

At this moment the Victory did something he didn't realize was an option, they rotated till they were upside down based on his perspective giving all four APBs a clear sight of the Ha'tak. _No up in space idiot_ he chastised himself as he saw the four APB beams create a sort of net where there was no good vector that the Ha'tak could take to dodge them all, it seems they noticed as well and panicked taking two glancing blows as the computer noted the shields barely holding before the sensors went fuzzy in that area with the tell tale of a MarkⅨ going off. Cheers went around the bridge as the static left and there was an expanding debris cloud. Fifteen seconds.

Then it hit the fan. The ship shook like some angry God had decided it no longer liked its toys and he was nearly thrown from his chair, the same couldn't be said for the other bridge crew as he heard groans and curses when the shaking lessened but didn't stop.

"The hell was that!" he shouted

"The weapon installations are opening up!" his pilot said as he tried to maneuver around the great bolts of plasma he could see around the ship.

"Well shit" he responded looking to the monitor. Five seconds.

It seems the installations weren't getting their MIRV as at ten seconds it split into its twenty missiles and flew to their targets. They probably tried maybe even succeeded getting two or three but one doesn't use a rocket launcher to take out a man a few feet in front of them. Such was the problem for the ground based weapons. Zero seconds.

"Get the Victory on the line" he said

"I'm here Colonel" came the Generals voice, which surprised him, he was talking in Russian the entire time. It appears there is another thing the General is good at hiding.

"What are you seeing?" he asked this time in English

"I am seeing all but one Alpha and only two Beta targets gone" she said, the lowest yet and they missed one shipyard. Really it was more of a couple of holes in the ground with the shape of an Alkesh where they used that as the foundation and began building, far to inefficient. Still it was a kick in the balls.

"Are we leaving?" he asked

"Yes" she responded and a nod to his pilot later the Kursk turned away from the Planet and a crack in reality opened before he shot through it.

"Well they seem to be expecting us General, shall I still fast track the reloading or the MIRV?" he asked

"Yes get on that and then lets talk privately" she responded _great more demands of my crew_ he thought before giving a quick confirmation and relayed orders to his men to make sure his crew were safe. They were closer to the planet and more or less acted as cover for the Victory when the planetary guns opened up. So they had the worst of it.

A quick walk to his ready room and he sat down going over the logs as reports came in, three railguns non responding on the port flight pod, it seems that particular second of shield was hit so hard there was some bleed thru before it stabilized, some minor shield control crystals were electrified, that was a relatively simple quick replacement or a grounding pack, either way. Thank god the new Daedalus had switched from Goa'uld crystals to Asgard control crystals. For Asgard control crystals to be electrified meant that the old Goa'uld crystals would've shattered from the electricity. They were still working on completely replicating the Ancient control crystals but it seems the Asgard were only able to copy the functions of a crystal and not its longevity and strength, for a race the Ancients sure built long term. A few other crystals either damaged or electrified and then the wounded reports came in, some tech was nearly electrocuted, he appeared to be near the infirmary and they got to him quick enough, the second worst was a broken rib and it got better from there. No deaths that's good. A ring came from the terminal.

"General" he said

"I have Lieutenant Cole with me here Colonel" she responded and he froze, before realizing he couldn't read his emotions over a subspace connection

"Very well. Shall I begin by stating the obvious, the Lucians know we were coming and are most certainly going to be fully prepared at the last Shipyard" he hoped for all that is holy and good that the freak wouldn't contradict him because he has heard his logic reasoning before and the way he says things it was just to appealing for a military mind like himself to ignore it, he imagined it would be the same for the General.

"We agree with you over here Colonel" - _good_ \- "I've been told that there really is only one way if we want to break through the Shipyard with the installations and that is we need actionable intelligence"

"You wish to send my ship in the take a peek?" he asked noticing how she said she was told. He thought they agreed he may be a decent tactician but he was no battlefield commander.

"No all that is required is to get an idea of the force so we can shoot past, but near the planet in question still in hyperspace, we will get the data from the sensors and I can come up with a game plan from there" said the Lieutenant and he wished he hadn't said anything at all.

"And how long will this be taking?" he asked to the room and not really acknowledging the Lieutenant

"Give me a few hours after we get the data set, even if it seems a standard position I think I can figure something out" he responded

"So I'll not fast track the MIRV reload" he said

"Confirmed my ship will pull us out" The General responded, it was her ship that commanded the hyperspace corridor they flew thru. With the new generation of hyperdrives the necessary calculations were added to help with fleet movements, usually ships would fly in seperate corridors and it was rare for any two ships and nearly impossible for any two difference races to fly in the same corridor. Any race with hyperspace tech had figured out how to get multiple ships to enter and exit hyperspace thru the same window, the Goa'uld were particular masters of it. While the more advanced races such as the Asgard and Ancients there was an ability to enter different hyperspace windows and eventually merge the two corridors and give command of were both ships dropped out to the leading vessel. No one knew the limits to this system as the Goa'uld only ever had at max a dozen ships ranging from the large Ha'tak to relatively small Al'kesh. Now while merging between two races hostile to each other is certainly possible, no one was crazy enough to do it, except of course the Replicators. They were masters of this technique using it to take over ships as they flew through Hyperspace.

"Alright shall we speak privately?" he said, she wanted to speak privately so he figured now what the end of the usefulness of the Lieutenant. He overheard a dismissed and the Canadian leave.

"Well how are things over there Colonel?" she asked in the same sing-song voice, sort of freaky really.

"We have a few minor annoyances but…" he checked the reports on the railguns, a hard reset of the control systems for those railguns brought one online "I am down another two railguns, it could be wiring but we won't know till a few hours after we check them all" the sequential raids had taken their tolls on the number of railgun positions still online across his ship

"Yup you got the brunt of that initial barrage from planetside I thank you for that even though you were ordered to stay in formation" she said

The Colonel felt a smile spread across his face "Speaking of formation that rolling onto your back was something, did you come up with that yourself?"

"Oh no that was the Lieutenant" and the Colonels smile dropped "after my weapons officer said it aloud he suggested we roll the ship, keep forgetting there is no up or down. You would think a pilot wouldn't but I think the Navy traditions we carried over here is getting a bit too deep" she said

"Ah well... maybe not only a tactician then?" he said aloud really dreading having to give one to the freak

"Indeed" the General responded

* * *

 **USS General George Hammond, Beta Site**

 **Sametime…**

The Hammond didn't have a particular reason for it to be over the Beta site - the site of the Tau'ri main shipyards - but then again it had no particular reason to be anywhere else in the Galaxies. The Apollo and Daedalus were in Pegasus and last she heard were preparing to attack a dormant Wraith shipyard. The Victory and Kursk - the newest of the ships - were taking on Masim and a number of known Naquadriah depots and the Alliances single mine for the dangerous metal. While the Odyssey and Sun Tzu were at Earth, the former being placed there permanently as defense and hyperspace detector for any ships heading toward Earth while the latter was a third of it way through its refit to one of the newer Daedalus models.

Colonel Carter was at this moment looking over the list of discoveries of the Tria and its technology that are embedded into its hull that they only just realized it had now. First up on the chopping block Asgard beaming - but not really beaming - the Asgard beaming system was meant to move something from one location to another, with movement between those two points where the something was information in a specific storage crystal that they had no real clue why it does what it does. The Ancients have decided that moving things that way was a pain so their transporter booths work sort of the same way but instead move along a wire of the more refined storage crystal and can be connected through a link to other storage crystal wire. That is what allows the crew of an Aurora to just transport booth down to the Ancient cities without shuttles. But that was known since the first year they had inhabited Atlantis. What is new however is their ability to store tons of matter as information without the crystals wearing out quickly as the Asgard crystals tend to do and on top of that the ability to somehow change said matter into whatever they need, going so far as the ability to change an element into one of its isotopes.

The type of crystals responsible for this are few on the Tria and are currently in an isolation box to Carters left. She had this as her current project, while McKay had taken the most destructive weapon system known to… anyone really. Turns out the weapon at Dakara wasn't the only anti-everything type of gun the Ancients made, strapped onto the hull of the Tria was one such weapon and taking up an entire drone hangar was its main components. The true scope of the weapon is classified to Alpha level - anything below that suggests that it can only target the vibrating frequency of replicators- along with the knowledge that the Arc of Truth exists and the ability to Time Travel using stargates and other devices, certainly not the only ones that highly classified but the more dangerous knowledge that shouldn't become common.

At the moment though McKay is out dealing with Langara scientists in trying to use their core to dial the Destiny, she was unsure how that would turn out. Jonas was quite reasonable but the last two planets blew up and she knew the math behind McKay's work was slightly beyond Langaran scientists.

The third discovery was the schematics on the chair interfaces. After the unlocking of Admiral level access on the Tria it turned out to have a large amount of Ancient 'classified' technology. One of them including the chair interface, they had the programs for years now but the actual technology escaped them. Now though they could make the interfaces and install them on their ships allowing a quicker manipulation of controls and reaction timing from all crew. That is if they have the Ancient gene, or are Ancients themselves.

She tried to fight to have Cole back on her ship but the IOA didn't trust his mental state or just him in general and banned him from being off world after his accident and only relented with the Victory as she was able to emit the anti-prior device wavelengths that could block his ability to control the ship with his mind, even if he is relatively weak in the more prominent Prior abilities. She tried to get the British General in a room alone before they left and asked if she can take him under her wing but she couldn't get to in time. The Lieutenant had great potential as a fleet commander - a tactician he already was but an Admiral he could be with the right teaching. The last time she saw a mind like his was years ago and now she is the science officer of SG - 1 after multiple stints at Area 51 and the SGC.

A sigh escaped her

"Ma'am?" one of the scientists working with her asked.

"I'm alright Doctor, just slightly upset" she responded and it was true. While Hailey turned out amazing with limited oversight she could only imagine what cole could be now, with that mind of his after his accident he could be a great scientist or an Admiral. Not many could say that about themselves, and fewer could actually see it in others. She knew Jack saw it, even if he wouldn't admit he even knew who Lieutenant Cole was, and she knew the late General Hammond would to. He always had an eye for talent, it was how Earth survived in those early years.

"Is it to do with the Second Lieutenant Cole?" he asked and she raised an eyebrow at him, which he responded with a smile. "The kid was smart before his transformation, able to understand how hyperspace engines worked with the Tachyon particles inhabiting subspace and their leaking into normal space with the opening of a window. Then his stunt with the sublights. Quite a prodigy"

"Indeed he was" she responded looking back at the list, something about skin tight shields.

"I hear now he has been learning entire disciplines since his accident" he said aloud as he also went back to his terminal and began doing something - she wasn't entirely sure what - the Doctor was an odd one, an astrophysicist while also being equal in knowledge with some geologists that Homeworld Command employed. He could be looking at stars or rocks for all she knew. At the moment she gave him an interested humm that she knew he knew meant he was suppose to keep talking.

"Got an old colleague working on the power armour we are trying to make" she didn't particularly like the idea - seemed to science fiction and nerdy for her tastes, but her only love in terms of television was Macgyver so she should keep quiet - but then thinking back to Anubis' super soldiers she wouldn't mind having a beefed up version of those suits packed with marines under her command. "He wandered in one day because he wanted to ask about a project of his and looked around, he fixed their power distribution problems like that" and he snapped his fingers "they were stuck on that for months. And when he got the answer he was looking for he left they weren't able to get out of their stupor of the elegance that he used to solve their problem, his words"

She only nodded her head, the Power armour was suppose to run on battery packs and she had heard that they were attempting to add some freaky tech that Atlantis had encountered and were close to figuring out the 'Blink band' that they saw a runner use. The ability to disappear and appear instantly a short distance away, quite useful. Along with a cloak and Ancient healing devices they were really going all out. She imagined when they didn't deliver a working prototype in a few months the IOA will pull back on some of their requests.

"He is designing a standard spacesuit I hear…" he said aloud, another good point. The only space suits they currently have are either borrowed/stolen from more advanced civilizations or taken from NASA. Not really military grade those suits. It was one of those small niches that Homeworld hadn't sent funding to fill, a newer weapon with their better alloys was also one that they wouldn't do, the IOA liked the idea of big scary spaceships not realizing it's the men and women on the ground that give them those spaceships.

"Indeed" she responded looking at the newest tech to come off the Tria, Radeck appears to have finally found the composition and instructions on how to build the alloy that the Tria's hull was made up of. It was just like most Ancient tech, meant to last millenia with little to no wear. It appeared to be better than the Asgardian metal that Homeworld is experimenting with, it's a shame the alloy is too metal intensive for armour of the newer Daedalus ships yet this one was quite interesting… "Biological compounds…" she said aloud

"Looking at the Chair construction materials?" the Doctor asked and she looked to him with a raised eyebrow

"There are biological compounds in the Chairs?" she asked genuine surprise in her voice

"Yup the Chairs, the Drones, and I guess whatever you are reading aren't about the Chairs. I do believe it is from the generation of tech that was after they launched the Destiny expedition" said the Doctor

"Generation?" she asked, she never really cared for Ancient history, that was Daniels forté.

"We split Ancient history in terms of the tech they used, the First age was when they launched Destiny, their tech looked more shoddy than it really was. Then after that they actually started growing their technology"

"Like the Wraith…" she said aloud

"Sort of. Their more advanced tech was grown and integrated with normal tech, which was why Drones and the Chairs have an almost biological look to them. They were first made during this generation and was only integrated with normal tech at the height of their empire during the first few millennia of the Great Alliance during their war against… someone still working on the history during the age of the Great Alliance"

"Quite a fascinating history of Ancient tech you know Doctor" she said

"Eh it comes with the job, a species that has travelled the stars for millions of years, quite the achievement" he said, and indeed it was. And now she was looking at the results of those millions of years of warship design and technology. The Trias hull had organic compounds that were stronger and more resistant to heat, radiation, and a number of other things that have no equal in anything she has seen. And she has seen quite a few things. She imagined that it couple probably survive plunging into a star, like the Destiny. There was no design reason for it to but after seeing those skin tight shields on the Tria had she figured it was what allowed the Destiny to fly through stars collecting the Hydrogen to power its reactors.

A skin tight shield focusing solely on surviving the heat, radiation, and magnetic fields of a star. She has seen the reports from the Destiny of its shields, the scientists at Area 51 give it even odds if it could survive a single shot from an APB. She figured that was pretty good for warfare four million years ago but now, now it wouldn't survive an encounter with an Anubis upgraded Ha'tak and may come out even with the standard Ha'tak that plague the Milky Way.

"Quite the achievement indeed Doctor. And now we know how to make their advanced armour half of the production is growing it ourselves…" she said tilting her tablet so that he knows she is reading from it

"Would cut down on Daedalus production if we just let it grow instead of mining and refining" the Doctor pointed out

"Indeed it would… especially with the newer Asgard construction facilities" said Carter, she knew it took nearly two years to made the Prometheus and that was rushing it. With the new Daedalus shipyards and Asgard facilities a single five hundred meter long Daedalus ship could be built in a little under a year. Which was why they needed to move the main shipyards off world. Area 51 may have large amounts of space but it wasn't totally hidden from view. The floating Asgard construction facilities surrounding the new shipyards below would be seen from miles around. With two of the constructs per berth the Daedalus ships for Canada, France, and America were underway and will be finished within a month of eachother.

Canada's Hudson, France's Cassard, and America's Icarus. It appears someone somewhere thought the Phoenix was a bad name because last time a ship was slated to be named as such they lost General Hammond. The Icarus was a BC - 304D with the MIRVs while Cassard was a 304C with the MarkⅨs prepared for beaming. It's the Canadians with the strangest layout, they had neither the Horizon weapons platform or the beaming bays on the newer ships instead their ship had large empty rooms and a number of hardpoints on the outside of the ship for anything they could think of. The Canadian ship was meant to be a testbed for prototype technologies, she knew McKay had something to do with that, specifically the subspace capacitor prototype they are building somewhere in Canada that will be installed on the ship. Along with as close as the Canadians can get to installing an Asgard Core without pissing off other countries or making the subspace radiation leak that the Core usually does when on. A testbed indeed.

She quickly brought up the outside lenses and focused on the Beta site. Like the Alpha site the Stargate was located within a mountain but this mountain was a strange one, in that it is the only mountain for hundreds of miles and surrounded by flat grasslands where she could see three berths with the construction platforms above along with two other berths under construction with the construction platforms also being built, there was a long platform floating above an unfinished berth, probably helping out in the buildup if the Commander of the shipyard was smart. The nearest entrance to the Mountain was actually the mine, the largest trinium vein they had ever found on any planet was directly below the mountain so a two birds one stone situation happened at the Beta site, trinium for the Daedalus ships and a mountain for the Stargate.

Then something caught her eye on the Tria list. Its labeled as an anti boarding armoury filled with the weird Ancient handheld energy weapons but also nano-molecular swords… Why would the Ancients need swords of all things.


	11. Intermission 1

**High Orbit, Kashuuk**

 **Time: Unknown**

Ships burning. A graveyard that doesn't yet know it is one - that is Kashuuk now - that was what The Jukar-son thought looking out of the observation room, normally a hazardous place to be when in battle but the traitors could try with all their might, they won't break the space-shields that protect the motherships. He could see them now, five motherships in total each with the majesty that comes with their age, each one with uncountable wounds and patches on those wounds that show what they survived and just like all Sajuk who allow their wounds to be visible it was a promise to those that attempt to harm them - we survived this we will survive you - the traitors seem to be testing that promise.

Looking out farther he could see the Traitor motherships, ten in all. A force that would terrify any other people but the Houses of Kashuuk were not easily cowed. Among the forces of the Houses were hundreds of ships, thousands of defense platforms, and thousands of drones. Now the traitors were attacking again - another failed attempt - they have been attacking in the thousands for the past month while their motherships stayed out of the battle just far enough to command their forces and reinforce with the ships that come right off the production lines each one quickly put together with the resources that they are harvesting from the outer system.

They mined out a rather large moon of a gas giant last week and moved onto its second largest, the refining ships arriving and leaving a dozen at a time - no doubt bringing more resources. There use to be tens of thousands of defense platforms that stretched out past the orbit of the third moon but now only those left in the orbit of Kashuuk are left, they had thousands of ships each a mighty vessel that had histories that stretched centuries as it had been that long since a true war came to the Thousand Houses, lastly they had nearly a million drones but with a month of constant assaults the Houses were losing their footing.

The scrap of the destroyed vessels and drones would provide a boon for their own production lines but they would have to wait for the current assault to be broken before sending ships to collect the scrap, it has been two days of constant battle and based on how long it took last time to break their assault it will be another two days before the traitor forces were forced to retreat behind the third moon and their myriad of defenses they set up there. While they didn't have an influx of resources from space to use them doesn't mean the great lines of industry on the motherships were dormant, up from the surface of Kashuuk dozens of heavily armoured cargo ships - any less and they would be easy prey - were coming to deliver resources that were being turned into drones that were immediately launched and defense platforms that were immediately deployed to replenish Kashuuks diminishing grid.

The Houses were losing the initiative as they had chosen to send their motherships into the fray, a week ago the six motherships of Kashuuk would be in the same position as the traitors - far enough to command and reinforce but not close enough to truly be in the battle - but now all six are taking to the field and all six are tearing dozens of ships from the sky with their weapons. The plasma cannons tearing through shields and hull like they were paper, the firelances were spearing through dozens of drones a second, while the motherships space-shields were constantly shifting the outer ones being replaced by the inner ones and sometimes when the mothership is given a reprieve from being assaulted one or two would be sent out to give cover for other ships in the Kashuuk defense fleet.

He was waited for the moment, waiting to see the opening that the consensus would use and strike at the traitor motherships. A small opening, a miniscule gap in the weapons fire that would allow the mothership of House Jakir and its complement of ships to shoot past the attackers and face the traitor motherships. They tried this move two weeks ago with only destroyers - the assault had cost them dearly - the destroyers lost to the mothership defenders and the gap that the lost destroyers had defended was exploited by the traitors, luckily a brilliant move by the Houses allowed them to wipe the attacking force in a swift blow. Sadly they couldn't capitalize on it, the motherships immediately turned and jumped to their defenses on the third moon but now the traitors instincts were soon to betray them.

The traitors seemed to realize that unlike their motherships the Houses motherships were more dangerous on the field than off, so they are now sending half of their mothership guards and they will soon arrive onto the field in a few seconds. Which was why three of the motherships were so close together, usually distanced by a few thousand kilometers the motherships were now a single kilometer from each other Houses Mikial, Larsalem, and Jakir were betting their motherships on this plan. The three ships were preparing the ritual, dozens of metal spires that ran the length of the ships were slowly unveiling themselves and curving just enough that each spire made a third of a circle each, while they never touched one another it would still be enough to direct the ritual.

He could see the gap, that the defenders had spent the last two days moving their ships in such a way, focusing fire in such a way that the ships parted for the smallest of moments. Such a small gap in the fleet lines would be ignored by less advanced species but with the two combatants today they knew how to exploit such a small gap for the best advantages. This gap was such a danger that the reinforcing capital ships that were supposed to be defending the traitor motherships were redirected to fill the gap but it would take a few seconds, precious seconds that the defenders would use to enact their ritual.

One would be quite amazed at the sight that occured when the ritual was completed a dozen spires each stretching for a kilometer to the port of each mothership, and each motherships space-shields went down the shifting and cracking that occured on each space-shield stopped and they all disappeared their bright white no longer visible and only the motherships bodies were, and what a sight it was. Looking like they took the bright white of the space-shields the motherships began to glow in the pure white, lines of conduits across their surfaces and the metal spires lighten up creating a pattern not too dissimilar to a circuit board even if any present had no clue what a circuit board was. But for those present it was an awe inspiring sight.

For the defenders it has been over two millions of years since the ritual was used as the terrible power it unleashed was hostile to user and those the user aimed at alike, if not for the metal spires and their directional fields this power would wipe a hole in Kasuuks defenders twenty thousand kilometers in diameter.

For the attackers they had never seen such a weapon as the last time it was used on their species there were no survivors to tell of the tale. But little did they know that they had a tale that this weapon had played a part in, The Missing Million, they call it. The fleet numbering a million strong that attacked another galaxy disappeared, one day they sent everything was fine and the next not an iota of chatter came from them. That was the last time the weapon was fired and its destructive power was witnessed to the species here, as for species elsewhere it was a mere five years last that the weapon was used.

And when the reinforcing capital ships finally arrived they arrived to their death as the weapon fired. To others it would look like a bubble that expanded faster but this bubble didn't expand equally in all directions as physics would normally demand. No. This bubble expanded in a cone toward the attackers it expanded so fast that the drones and their metal minds and unbelievably processing speeds only had a fraction of a fraction of a second to calculate what it was before it hit. And when it hit the drones only came to one conclusion that they couldn't act on, due to the nature of the weapon and the coding of the drones the conclusion could only be seen by the drones and it went something like this: {weapon - unknown - can't move to escape - can't reinforce - hole estimated: 5000 kilometers}

And the drone was correct when the weapon hit every ship, drone, and scrap of metal in the 5000 kilometer diameter corridor the weapon created the ships were already dead - they just didn't know it yet. The battle seemed to pause for a second for The Jukar-son, but perhaps that was just him, either way the weapon did its work, destroying every bond that connected every atom of every piece of matter in the 5000 kilometer diameter corridor. Ionic, covalent, polar, and hydrogen all types and all configurations that bond atoms together were destroyed and like a cruel mistress the laws of the universe took effect. Everything wants to move to a low energy state, that is a law of the universe and so when the atoms that made up the ships, drones, and scrap in the corridor no longer had a reason to be so close together they spread out as fast as would allow which meant faster than could be seen. The energy used to break the bonds also seemed to affect the atoms in such a way that they couldn't re-bond with other atoms that would normally happen when a bond is broken and so in a half second a hole was made in the attackers line large enough for the mothership of House Jakir and its three dozen destroyers and cruisers to make their move, and they did.

A quick jump to FTL speeds and drop out was not unheard of for the species, what was unheard of was a mothership class vessel doing such a thing. Their engines couldn't survive such a beating but the Houses of Kashuuk were fine taking such a risk.

This particular mothership was the youngest of them - meaning at least three million years old - and as such it had the most efficient energy distribution systems. While older motherships were still efficient enough to not be too affected it still took time to repower all their systems after conducting the ritual but for House Jakir's mothership they didn't need the seconds it took other motherships and was able to immediately jump with its complement through the corridor they just created. The mothership dropped out a second later five hundred kilometers in front of three of the traitor motherships. For vessels such as these it was practically knife-fighting range. Then they opened fire.

The traitor motherships had the same space-shields as the Houses a simple look at the thin rectangle space-shields as they shifting and moved attempting to block the weapons fire confirmed this. But they were neither as resilient as the House space-shields, or numerous. A standard mothership of the Thousand Houses had space-shields that could be spread out defending every angle of the mothership and still be three layers thick, giving them the ability to swap out the outside space-shields with the inner undamaged ones. When the House motherships decided they were only threatened from one side the layers could be upwards of fifteen depending on the mothership. So when the weapons fire of the mothership of House Jakir and its three dozen destroyers opened fire on the three separate traitor motherships their space-shields fell one after another in a few minutes.

Then their armour was opened up to be preyed upon. The defenders for this particular set of motherships were attempting to destroy the attackers but they were weakened by the push they carried out not a half hour earlier and were easily picked off one after another by the cruisers that came along.

If one were to see the armour of the motherships they would think them beautiful with their pure white and light blue trim that came together showing artwork of battles long past or great moments in the motherships history. For the defending Houses they were a disgusting defilement to the motherships, even when the traitors and defenders were close friends they still thought as such. A mothership was a being of its own in their eyes, it had a soul and a will, and replacing damaged armour removed a motherships personality, removed its very soul in the eyes of the defenders. Where there would normally be a patch on the House motherships the traitors would remove the armour plate and replace it with a brand new plate.

Now with these different philosophies in mind one would think that the traitors had better armour as they were replaced when damaged instead of patched like those of the Houses. And normally they would be except for the growths of vine looking material that infested the motherships of the Houses, these vines were both alive and not they moved where the commanders of the motherships told them to and they listened they grew and required feeding like a living being but they also hardened and stopped feeding when told to. Such as when the vines were used to repair a hole/scratch/singe on the motherships armour and when they do such a thing they reinforce the patch making one in the same as the rest of the armour and not only making it as strong as the rest of the armour but making it stronger and thicker.

As for the traitors their armour wasn't stronger than their normal capital ships, while it was thicker and had multiple hulls it did little to help them as the destroyers were designed specifically to fight though shields of their capital ships and through their armour as well. It was a fast design that was completed in days when the traitors shown their true colours and said design had been adjusted and modified this past month to be true terrors to any of the traitor ships. The destroyers showed their prowess in drilling through said armour and a few minutes later there were hundreds of holes throughout the motherships as they attempted to move to a second grouping of traitor motherships. But that was useless as said motherships realized the failed attack and began to break away as the front lines began a coordinated retreat in an attempt to save as many ships as they could.

As the other seven traitor motherships jumped away the three damaged ones were dead in space, their reactors no longer operating, their productionlines destroyed, and their armour nothing better than scrap soon to be collected.

* * *

 **High Orbit, Kashuuk**

 **A day later…**

The Jukar-son was looking over the battle report that came, it was good, better than expected. For battles such as these the number of ships destroyed didn't matter - no - for battle such as these all that mattered was the gain/loss ratio of resources, the Houses had always had the best recycling systems and mines so the gain/loss ratio while still firmly in the losses column it wouldn't be as bad as the traitors, but this battle was the first and only where their ratio was finally in the gain column. That was most definitely due to the traitor motherships that were currently being stripped, their armour already taken off and most likely already part of the new platforms being built.

They didn't bother to take prisoners, the traitors would fight to their dying breath anyway, they knew that as they also knew that soon there will be a reinforcement of more motherships. The Thousand Houses knew how many motherships the traitors had, after all they were once close allies saving entire species from extinction and making sure that every being had a right to live.

The number was quite few considering, the traitors had a mere six hundred motherships while the Thousand Houses had exactly a thousand motherships yet hundreds weren't able to wage a war - their production lines taken from them and placed on planets, their reactors removed to power cities and their space-shields modified to defend such planets, even now of the twenty-two Houses that called Kashuuk home only six had fully functional motherships, ten of them were being used as way-stations between the surface and space, while the other six were on the ground, incapable of being launched within the decade. As for the other thousand Houses they were never as close to each other as the Houses of Kashuuk and each House either had their own planet or share it with a few other Houses the closest to Kashuuk is Olich where seven Houses have settled together so maybe they survived the opening days of the war or perhaps they didn't. Communications between the Houses have always been spotty at best this past few millennia and now with a war, it was non-existent. Only the space born Houses - the most traditional of them all - are probably the only ones truly safe from this war. That's probably where most of the traitor motherships are, out in space looking for the nomadic Houses.

These were the thoughts that filled The Jukar-son as he stepped into the Grand Hall of the mothership, the hall was the largest open-space inside the mothership and its majesty was reflecting it. Flowers of varying size and colour spread throughout the hall and they were all placed in such a way not to diminish eachother but it somehow enhanced each single one. To biologists it would be quite the find as most flowers weren't from the same planet as the one next to it, and some the same galaxy. Growing behind the flowers and out of the ceiling were trees, many light colours came out of these flaura, white, pink, orange and on the ceiling on one end of the hall was a tree that seemed to always have leaves even though there was a constant flow of falling leaves, the blood red made a beautiful picture. As if attempting to create a red carpet for those who enter through that side of the hall. The Jukar-son couldn't appreciate these sights as he was needed at the center domed building, the Grand Hall was empty as most were elsewhere; either to get sleep after the past two days straight of pure battle or others were working on building new ships and defenses, and a select few highly-experienced were attempting to get the ten motherships in low-orbit working. Normally those of another House would never be allowed to work on a Houses mothership but these weren't normal times.

"Patriarch" greeted The Jukar-son as he exited the grav-lift that lead to the top of the dome, it was an open space with a table with twenty-two seats.

A head nod of acknowledgement was all he got as a reply from the head of the House "Have you read the newest report on the ten Houses?" he asked with a slight disgusted tone that The Jukar-son picked up. Like a majority in the Thousand Houses the Patriarch was disgusted with the Houses that stripped their mothership of its systems and leave it as nothing more than a corpse on the worlds they occupied. However even if they were the majority among the Thousand Houses they were the minority on Kashuuk, only six Houses have kept their motherships operational while the remaining twelve have already or were preparing to move their motherships to the surface below.

"No Patriarch. I was studying the results of the battle" he responded looking to the Patriarch, he is one of their oldest leaders - not the oldest - but still unusually so. The Jukar would have stepped down by now and taken his rightful seat on the Circle of Elders but his replacement was disgraced and he was forced to remain the head until another proved themselves, specifically The Jukar-son.

"A good boon for us indeed. Such resources will allow us to speed up the activation of the mothership reactors" while technically true it will only speed it up by a few days. It will still be months before their reactors are online, let alone the engines and production lines. It took a decades to strip the mothership down to how it is now and it took a century to get the six motherships on the ground.

"When shall the Houses be ready?" There was always a meeting for the heads of every House after each push back, the last time was a week ago when the battle lasted for five long days. They lost so many platforms during that attack that they were forced to bring the motherships into the fight this time around. But with so many resources they won't be forced to do such a thing again for at least the next month if the war continued like it has been.

"We are waiting still, bringing us online…" the Patriarch said waving his hand in front of him as if summoning beings and true enough it look like he did. Fifteen of the twenty-one empty seats filled each one with a ghostly figure that had the vague outline of their bodies the projectors were never needed to be more precise as all they really needed was an acknowledgement that the being was there and one could look them in their weird not a face and talk. Each one of them probably had either their second or expected replacement next to them like The Jukar had but like The Jukar-son they weren't represented as the ghostly figures around the table.

"Jukar it is good of you to join us" came the voice of The Kajii of House Soban, his mothership currently served as a storage depot and repair yard for the fleets. Ships were being designed to help bring the mothership down to the surface below and the motherships final resting place was being built. According to The Kajii he is going to try and make the mothership into a palace of sorts. He is young and arrogant, unfortunately the Circle of Elders for House Soban is nearly empty and none seem to try and correct the young Kajii in his arrogance.

"Kajii" he acknowledge him not bothering to get pulled into a fight with the young head "Anything I should be aware of before this begins?" he asked looking around looking right into each of the non existent eyes of the ghostly figures.

"Are we not to wait for our equals?" asked The Levitin of House Waters, the oldest of the known Houses. The ancient house has even been mentioned in the only surviving texts from their homeworld and even tales from before the Thousand Houses took to the stars. This was the one of the few things that all the Houses of Kashuuk understood and accepted. The mothership of House Waters was as old as history and had seen not only House Waters but many other Houses through dangerous times - even as other Houses withered to extinction House Waters stood strong and had over three dozen Houses that descend from them. The mothership was even one of the mythical ten who were graced with names 'The Behemoth'. No House had denied The Behemoth's rest as every House understood that even motherships can become too old and tired. Even now on the surface of Kashuuk The Behemoth sleeps, possibly forever, or possibly just biding its time till one day it will rise again show that it is still dangerous no matter its age.

"All of the needed Houses are present" said The Kajii openly disrespecting the six Houses that weren't present.

"We are still missing five of Kashuuk Houses and House Mikial" pointed out The Jukar looking to The Kajii "We do not wish to insult the heroes of this battle now do we?" when a slew of confirmations came from the different Houses were uttered, one could feel the seething from The Kajii when he confirmed as well. House Mikial one of five Houses on Kashuuk that descended from House Waters. The split was a notable event in the history of the Thousand Houses when House Waters had decided to be one of the first to 'lay down their engines' and settled on a world. Three dozen Houses descended and protected House Waters before then and now only five still stay with their parent House. The Splitting of Oceans it was called.

"Perhaps we can speak of what to do with the remnants of the Swords that still reside on Kashuuk" asked a House.

The Swords were of the same species as the traitors but had not yet succumb to the curse that plagued their brothers. The Swords were the traitors and the Shields were the Thousand Houses together these two species have installed a Golden age in the galaxy that has lasted for one and a half million years, after the War Hunger curse had taken the Swords those two million years ago they had to be beaten into submission.

When still confined to their homeworld this curse caused them to war with each other, each one a war of genocide but it never did become a genocide as eventually the War Hunger faded and they could accept peace with one another, this unfortunately followed them to the stars and eventually the galaxy soon became a small place for the Swords and the War Hunger took them and they slaughtered entire species before coming into contact with the Thousand Houses as they were moving through the galaxy. The war was costly for the Swords but the Thousand Houses enjoyed a good war and had the technological edge so they played the part of the farmer with the scythe - cutting down the wheat so that others may grow - but eventually numbers won out and the Houses themselves were threatened forcing them to flee.

Eventually the Thousand Houses returned and broke the Swords cleansing entire planets before the War Hunger faded and the Swords surrendered. It took centuries before a cure for the curse to be made and it worked, for two million years it worked and in that time a Golden age came for the galaxy that was watched over by the Swords and Shields. As all the species as old as the Swords were wiped out in the galactic genocide only the young could enjoy the Golden age, until now. Now the Swords are cursed again - the cure no longer working - and the Thousand Houses were disjointed. Now the young species across the galaxy experience the terror of the Swords afflicted with the War Hunger, now the young species feel the pain of a parent who was always so gentle turning on them. For the Houses of Kashuuk they didn't know whether the Swords had finished their extinction of the younger species or if some of them still hang on, or perhaps they ran - a few of the oldest of the young had tried to emulate their caretakers and build mothership class vessels of their own - they weren't anything close to the power of the Swords let alone the Thousand Houses but motherships all the same. The Swords had a million year technological edge over even the oldest of the young so even if the Houses of Kashuuk drive back the attack and venture into the galaxy they may come across empty worlds and corpses piled higher than buildings, too late to help anyone.

"We must isolate the Swords from the natural air as should a single traitor make their way to the ground the they to would be taken by the War Hunger" said The Levitin, his House was the oldest not because of luck, House Waters have always had the wisest of leaders and every House around the table knew as much, though one might not care.

"I say we just kill them all, to risky to keep them alive while only a single one of their brothers affected with the curse could turn them against us" The room paused for a second everyone there not quite believing someone would suggest such a dishonourable act.

"Dishonourable!" "Petulant Child!" "Ridiculous!" and a number of other insults were directed his way, House Soban may have to largest factories but it was such a disregard to the Edicts that every House present threw insults his way. And it appears he realized he overstepped his bounds as The Kajii kept quite and took the insults as he should. That specific quote will have The Kajii disgraced among the heads of the Houses for decades and it will take a quite the act to even out such a suggestion let alone be back into the good graces of the different Houses if it was possible.

"The Kajii of House Soban have disgraced the entirety of Kashuuk and the ancestors with their words. I The Sutan of House Jakir demand the expulsion of The Kajii!" the ghostly figure across from The Jukar stood up and pointed to the ghostly form of The Kajii. The room erupted whether encouraging The Jashim or discouraging his demand it was hard to tell as ever head tried to get a word in, it had been millenia since a head was expelled from the consensus and the young House Jakir - the heroes of the battle who took on three motherships and won - had been the one to made the demand, so soon after his victory no one would question his honour and right to demand as he had proven himself.

"You overstep Jashim!" responded The Kajii, and the room descended into further chaos. There would be no update today it seems.

* * *

 **High Orbit, Kashuuk**

 **A week later…**

Usually when such accusations are leveled against and an entire House the motherships would separate and never reunite till at the very least the generation is dead, sometimes after a few generations. But this was during a war they could possibly lose with Houses that still had operational motherships and others whose motherships were planetside and unable to leave, at least within the decade. So for the moment the consensus was effectively abolished as The Kajii had refused to acknowledge The Sutan and there wasn't going to be anything productive during the consensus for the next few years till this slight had cooled down for cooler heads to prevail or either The Sutan or The Kajii died, whichever was first. As for the consequences, the mothership of House Soban was ignored in favour of reactivation in favour of the other motherships cutting another few days off of there activation. Sure House Soban still had their own crystal smiths but it had been a millennia since the mothership of Soban was still flight worthy and as any crystal smith among the six Houses and they will tell you there is a massive difference from a ship systems and a motherships.

It was a week since the last battle was broken and usually based on their rather clockwork efficiency the traitors would soon begin their assault. Probes launched on a ballistic course have shown the Houses that the traitor motherships seemed to not have gone up but diminished, there was now five motherships and for the first time it appeared the Houses of Kashuuk were both technologically ahead as well as numerically. The motherships for the traitors seemingly had better places to be or a front had opened up tying up resources, they may be genocidal at this moment but they were far from tactically stupid. However they seemed to have replaced the motherships with seven factory-ships, the difference between to two was that a mothership could defend itself and was feared for its mighty space-shields whereas the factory-ships had neither weapons or space-shields they didn't even had regular shields only relying on its rather weak armour.

The traitors knew such a disadvantage so along with the shipyards sent ten supercapital ships, the massive vessels have a long history of subduing entire races and clearing entire sections of the galaxy with their presence alone, such ships were so respected and feared among the younger races that only fifty have ever been made. Now there were ten ships bearing down on the Houses of Kashuuk and they had to deal with them. Luckily for the Houses the traitors only send three of the supercapital ships forward keeping seven back each one to defend a factory-ship. They also have learned from their mistakes and seperated the motherships and factory-ships by tens of thousands of kilometers instead of keeping three together like last time. It would take all five traitor motherships to take on a mothership of the Thousand Houses, such was the technological superiority. This superiority was also seen in their manufacturing ability. Where the traitors with the five motherships and seven factory-ships were able to reinforce their attacking fleets with a few dozen capital ships and a little over a hundred other ships and a few hundred drones the Houses of Kashuuk had reinforced by the hundreds. seven new capital ships, fifteen new heavy ships, twenty new light ships, two hundred new defense platforms and over a thousand new drones.

The industrial might of the Thousand Houses were not to be laughed at and soon the traitors would begin their assault and attempt to break the unbreakable and they will the thrown back again as the Thousand Houses have survived ten million years among the stars and they will survive for another ten million.


End file.
